Completed Pregnancy, Children & Inherited Conditions Diabetes, Hormones & Metabolism

PRECISE-DYAD: linking maternal and infant health trajectories in sub-Saharan Africa

Funder Wellcome Charity-funded
Associated organisations Imperial College London · King's College London · King's College London School of Medicine · London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine · University of British Columbia · University of Liverpool Europe PMC affiliations are not treated as award recipients or mapped locations.
Funding £4.0M
Period Aug 2020 — Jul 2023

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

A quarter of a million pregnant women and their newborns in The Gambia and Kenya will be tracked for years to determine how complications like pre-eclampsia, stillbirth, and preterm birth shape lifelong health. Pregnancy complications are known to increase a woman’s risk of later heart disease, diabetes, and depression, and can impair a child’s physical and cognitive development. But almost all evidence comes from high-income countries. PRECISE-DYAD fills that gap by following 6,000 mother-infant pairs in sub-Saharan Africa, where rates of these complications are highest and social and environmental pressures—such as poor nutrition, infection, and pollution—are different. The study will also examine the toll on mothers who care for children with neurodevelopmental delays. If successful, the project will produce the first large-scale, region-specific map of how pregnancy disorders alter health trajectories across generations. That database and biorepository could eventually guide cheap, practical interventions—for example, screening women after a complicated pregnancy for early signs of heart disease, or designing support programmes for mothers of children with developmental delays. The work is applied epidemiology, not fundamental science, and is designed to lead directly to interventions that could improve maternal and child health in some of the world’s most resource-limited settings.

View original technical description
PRECISE-DYAD will extend the ongoing PRECISE network study [PRECISEnetwork.org] of 6,000 pregnant women and their infants (dyads); it will provide a greater epidemiological and mechanistic understanding of health and disease pathways in the sub-Saharan African context (The Gambia and Kenya), following uncomplicated pregnancies and those complicated by pregnancy hypertension, fetal growth restriction, stillbirth, and/or preterm birth. For women, we aim to determine if, and how, these pregnancy events identify those more likely to avoid complications in subsequent pregnancies, mental ill-health, or early onset of cardiometabolic diseases. For their children, we will assess the impact of these pregnancy disorders on their physical, mental, and neurodevelopmental health to 2-3 years of age. We will explore the consequences for maternal health trajectories of caring for children with moderate-to-severe neurodevelopmental delay resulting from complicated pregnancies, and will interrogate interactions with social determinants of health, including environmental exposures on maternal and infant health. We will develop a rich database and a large sample biorepository for future studies. Thereby, PRECISE-DYAD aims to achieve an overarching understanding of the factors that contribute to optimal maternal and child health within these contexts. Ultimately, the goal is to design interventions to optimise health of mothers and their children.

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Researchers

Amina Abubakar (EPMC Awardee)Benjamin Barratt (EPMC Awardee)Joel Singer (EPMC Awardee)Joy Lawn (EPMC Awardee)Laura Magee (EPMC Awardee)Melissa Gladstone (EPMC Awardee)Peter von Dadelszen (EPMC Awardee)Sophie Moore (EPMC Awardee)

Related Research

Grants with similar aims, by meaning.

GCRF: The PRECISE (PREgnancy Care Integrating translational Science, Everywhere) Network: a sub-Saharan network for placental disorders
Understanding phenotype and mechanisms of spontaneous preterm birth in sub-Saharan Africa (PRECISE-SPTB)
HDHL: A precision nutri-epigenetic approach to tackle the mother-to-child transmission of impaired glucose metabolism
Community-based Research for Assessment, Detection and management of hypertension after pregnancy for LifetimE Benefit (CRADLE-B)
Mapping the maternal-fetal interface at a single-cell resolution to interrogate the aetiology of severe pre-eclampsia and identify potential disease

Original classification

Collaborative Award in Science

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