Completed Pregnancy, Children & Inherited Conditions Lungs & Breathing

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children: An international resource for population genomics and lifecourse epidemiology. Core Programme Support 2011-2013.

Funder Wellcome Charity-funded
Recipient organisation University of Bristol
Funding £6.0M
Period Apr 2011 — Mar 2014

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

A single study has tracked over 10,000 families in the Bristol area for more than two decades, and now plans to follow the grandchildren as well. This matters because most long-term health studies stop at one generation. ALSPAC already holds detailed genetic samples, clinical measurements, and questionnaire data from mothers, children, and fathers. By adding the grandchildren—1,500 to 2,000 new participants—the study becomes a three-generation resource. That allows researchers to ask questions no other dataset can answer: how do parents’ health and environment before conception affect their grandchildren’s development? Which genetic and social influences persist across generations, and which fade? If this succeeds, the resource will help scientists unpick the roots of conditions that take decades to emerge—heart disease, diabetes, mental illness, asthma. It will also let researchers recruit participants based on specific genetic variants, enabling targeted studies of rare or subtle effects. The work is fundamental epidemiology, not a clinical trial. It builds a public infrastructure for discovery, much as the original Framingham Heart Study did for cardiovascular risk factors. The payoff will come over decades, as other scientists mine the data for links that no single study could see.

View original technical description
This proposal will further develop the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and their Children (ALSPAC) resource in ways that render it of maximal value to the scientific community. Extensive data have been collected on over 10,000 mothers initially recruited when pregnant in the early 1990s, their offspring and their partners. This includes a substantial biobank of biological samples, data from repeated clinical assessments and questionnaires on the children, a single clinical assessment and rep eat questionnaires on the mothers, and repeat questionnaires on the partners. The resource will be developed by (1) further questionnaire follow-up as the adolescents transition into adulthood, and their parents as they move towards later middle age; (2) recruitment of the grandchildren of the mothers originally recruited that will total over 1500-2000 over the award period - creating a unique three-generational resource; (3) a clinical examination and further biological sample collection on t he fathers; (4) establishment of the study as a recruit-by-genotype resource; (5) consent from siblings of the original ALSPAC children to enter the study and piloting low-cost data collection from them; (6) developing remote secure access data handling and other approaches to allow maximal utilisation of the data.

View the original record at the funder ↗

Researchers

George Davey Smith (EPMC Awardee)

Related Research

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The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC): A multi-generation, longitudinal resource focusing on life course health and well-being.
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The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC): A multi-generation, longitudinal resource
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Original classification

Strategic Award - Science

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