Completed Pregnancy, Children & Inherited Conditions Lungs & Breathing

The Avon Longitudinal Study for Parents and Children: An international resource for population genomic and lifecourse epidemiology. Core programme support 2014-2019.

Funder Wellcome Charity-funded
Recipient organisation University of Bristol
Funding £7.9M
Period Apr 2014 — Dec 2019

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) has tracked thousands of people from before birth through early adulthood, along with their parents and now their own children, creating an unmatched record of human development. This matters because most studies capture only a snapshot of health, missing the long arc of how genes, environment, and early life experiences shape disease decades later. ALSPAC fills that gap by linking genetic data, epigenetic markers, and detailed environmental exposures across generations—allowing researchers to trace developmental trajectories that mark critical periods in human life. If sustained, this resource will continue to reveal how conditions in pregnancy or childhood influence adult health, and how those effects may pass to the next generation. The study’s open-access design means scientists worldwide can mine its data without duplicating the decades of effort. This is primarily a fundamental science resource—it does not aim to produce an immediate treatment or policy. But similar longitudinal studies have underpinned breakthroughs in understanding asthma, obesity, mental health, and cardiovascular risk, quietly informing public health guidance and medical practice for years to come.

View original technical description
The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) is a prospective cohort study with unprecedented scope and detail of information on thousands of people from before birth through to early adulthood, on their parents and now on their children. It is an internationally valued resource at the forefront of population-based research. ALSPAC allows the investigation of developmental trajectories marking critical periods in human life, the genetic and epigenetic factors contributing to heal th and disease and the environmental exposures which form the context within which these processes act. As ALSPAC participants enter adulthood and start having children, the study's potential to contribute to scientific discovery is expanding, giving a greater capacity to explore links between current and future health and the intergenerational components of health and disease. ALSPAC is unequivocally the richest open-access epidemiological resource in the world. Our goals are to ensure that ALS PAC (i) is sustained, (ii) has participation maximised and (iii) is enhanced. These goals will be delivered by follow-up of the original cohort through clinic assessment, questionnaires and record linkage, data collection on their children, consolidation of GWAS data on all participants and the development of epigenomics research.

View the original record at the funder ↗

Researchers

George Davey Smith (EPMC Awardee)

Related Research

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Original classification

Strategic Award - Science

Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.