Project: Early life programming of childhood health: a nutritional and epigenetic investigation of adiposity and bone, cardiometabolic, neurodevelopmental and respiratory health
WHAT: The ALPHABET project aims to improve our understanding of nutritional and epigenetic biomarkers of offspring health with a view to refining dietary exposure measures and to aid development of more effective evidence-based public health strategies with an emphasis on advocating a healthy diet in pre-pregnancy, pregnancy and early postnatal life, to reduce obesity, improve health and attenuate development of a range of adverse health outcomes in future generations.
WHO: The consortium includes 7 partners from 6 countries (Ireland, UK, France, The Netherlands, Poland and the US). The partners are Catherine Phillips, University College Dublin, Ireland; Caroline Relton, University of Bristol, UK; Nicholas Harvey, University of Southampton, UK; Barbara Heude, INSERM UMR 1153, France; Liesbeth Duijts, Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam, Netherlands; Kinga Polanska, Nofer Institute of Occupational Medicine, Poland and James Hebert, University of South Carolina, US. The ALPHABET project is coordinated by Dr. Catherine Phillips in UCD.
HOW: Utilising biological samples and data from existing European longitudinal birth cohorts at the international forefront of lifecourse epidemiology we will investigate the complex relationships between maternal diet (defined by dietary quality and inflammatory potential), offspring health outcomes (including adiposity, bone, cardiometabolic, respiratory and neurodevelopmental health) and epigenetic patterns (DNA methylation) from birth throughout childhood.
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