2009 Press Releases

UCC study recruits pregnant women
21.01.2009

UCC researchers are now recruiting mothers and their babies from the Cork University Maternity Hospital to the BASELINE birth cohort study, which will look at why some children develop common childhood diseases while others remain healthy.
Initially the research, which has been funded by the Children’s Research Centre, Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin, will concentrate on the effects of poor growth in the womb, the incidence and prevalence of food allergy and eczema in early childhood and the incidence and effects of maternal and infant vitamin D status on the growth and health of Irish children.
 
Children will be seen at two, six, 12 and 24 months and will receive detailed assessments of their diets, general health, growth and development.  This will be the first study to follow Irish children from birth and will be one of the few studies worldwide in which detailed information about their environment in the womb is available from long before they are born.  At birth, blood will be sampled from the umbilical cord and stored for future analysis in an effort to unlock the causes of some of our commonest childhood diseases.
 
There is increasing evidence that what goes on in the womb has important effects, not only on a baby’s growth, but also on the life-long health of the child. A newborn infant is the end result of nine months of interplay between the baby, the placenta and mother. It is not surprising that this nutritional and hormonal environment has far-reaching effects on childhood health and adult health risk. Poor growth of a baby in the womb has been repeatedly linked with adult risk of high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease. Extremely poor growth in the womb may be associated with later learning and behavioural problems. A mother’s vitamin D status affects a baby’s bone growth and has continued effects in the child’s bone strength up to adolescence and beyond. We do not know the effects of early life exposure on our rapidly rising incidence of childhood allergy. It is clear, then, that to establish the underlying cause of many childhood diseases we need to look back to long before birth.
 
The opportunity to establish the BASELINE birth cohort has been made possible by the important obstetric research study, SCOPE Ireland, which is now taking place in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, UCC. The SCOPE study is part of the largest maternity study to ever take place worldwide. It follows closely 10,000 first time mums to identify risk factors for the most important complications of pregnancy; pre-term birth, pre-eclampsia and poor fetal growth. Of these, 3000 mothers will be recruited from the Cork area. This detailed maternal study has allowed access to important information about a large group of babies from early fetal life. The BASELINE researchers will have information about the diet, lifestyle and health of the baby’s mother’s from the time that they are 15 weeks pregnant.   After birth the children’s early life environment, diet and lifestyle will be recorded, along with detailed monitoring of their growth, development and health. Birth cohort studies are taking place in many countries worldwide and have offered us very important information about why some children develop disease whilst others remain healthy. This will be the first study to follow Irish children from birth and will be one of few studies worldwide in which detailed information about their environment in the womb is available from long before they are born.

The BASELINE study is a collaborative study between the Departments of Paediatrics and Child Health (Professor Jonathan Hourihane and Dr Deirdre Murray), Obstetrics and Gynaecology (Dr Louise Kenny) and Food and Nutritional Science (Dr Mairéad Kiely), University College Cork, and the Department of Dermatology, Trinity College, Dublin (Professor Alan Irvine). Recruitment of mothers is now taking place in the Cork University Maternity Hospital and follow up of the BASELINE children will take place in the Children’s unit of the Cork University Hospital. The data from the study will offer many opportunities for further research as the children grow older.  It will form a unique bio-bank of information from Irish children collected from soon after their conception.

Picture shows L-R: Dr Deirdre Murray, Dr Louise Kenny, Dr Mairéad Kiely, Professor Jonathan Hourihane, UCC.  Missing from the picture is collaborator, Professor Alan Irvine, Department of Dermatology OLCHC/Department of Clinical Medicine, TCD.

958RMcD



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