HDHL-Biomarkers: Early life programming of childhood health (ALPHABET)

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The rising prevalence of obesity, cardiometabolic disease, asthma, osteoporosis and neurodevelopmental disorders over recent decades cannot be fully explained by genetic or adult lifestyle factors. Increasing evidence suggests that early life exposure to environmental factors influences offspring health. According to the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) hypothesis transient environmental exposures during critical periods of development (e.g. fetal and early infant phases of life) can elicit lifelong effects on offspring health. Epigenetic phenomena have been proposed as mechanisms by which detrimental fetal or early life exposures, such as suboptimal nutrition during pregnancy or early childhood, may affect offspring phenotype and risk of adverse health years after exposure. Maternal diet during pregnancy is a modifiable behaviour that could impact on maternal, neonatal and child health. However the specific dietary requirements during pregnancy for optimal fetal growth and development are unknown. Furthermore studies addressing the hypothesis of fetal programming have focused on maternal intake of single nutrients during pregnancy. Nutrients are not consumed in isolation, thus examining the combined effects of multiple dietary components reflecting the whole diet could have important public health implications. There is a clear need for primary prevention of obesity, related cardiometabolic conditions and other chronic non-communicable diseases based on the DOHaD paradigm. This project aims to advance the state-of-the-art by significantly expanding the knowledge base regarding interactions between biomarkers of diet, epigenetics and offspring health. 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 a novel index of dietary inflammatory potential), offspring health outcomes (including adiposity, bone, cardiometabolic, respiratory and neurodevelopmental health) and epigenetic patterns (DNA methylation) from birth throughout childhood. Better understanding of nutritional and epigenetic biomarkers of offspring health will afford opportunities to refine 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.