Prenatal influences on childhood health: what role for mums and dads?

产前对儿童健康的影响：妈妈和爸爸扮演什么角色？

• 批准号: MR/S009310/2
• 负责人: Gemma Sharp
• 金额: $ 8.26万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF EXETER
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=MR%2FS009310%2F2
• 关键词: Prenatal; influences; childhood; health; what

While it is widely recognised that a woman's lifestyle and experiences during pregnancy can influence the development and health of her child, remarkably little robust, scientific research supports this link. This limited evidence-base means that much of the current public health advice given to pregnant women is inconsistent, confusing and may potentially even be harmful. Additionally, there is emerging evidence that a man's behaviour can influence the health of their unborn children, but very little public health advice is currently offered to fathers-to-be, and the scientific evidence is even more scant.This work aims to better understand how both maternal and paternal lifestyles in the prenatal period influence offspring health and social outcomes. Findings will highlight whether interventions to improve child health are best targeted at mothers, fathers or both parents.The project makes use of detailed and diverse data that has already been collected through several large birth cohort studies from the UK, the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark; allowing access to rich data on hundreds of thousands of people. Using these data, I will identify whether maternal and/or paternal smoking, alcohol intake, fat/sugar intake, caffeine and physical activity in the prenatal period are correlated with a range of childhood outcomes including birth weight, cleft lip/palate, body mass index, IQ and educational attainment. I will then apply several state-of-the-art statistical methods to infer whether these parental health behaviours actually cause these offspring outcomes, or whether the observed correlations arise because of other "confounding" factors (e.g. socioeconomic position). Where it looks like the relationship is causal, I will use several statistical methods to infer whether the outcome is caused by maternal behaviour, paternal behaviour, or a combination of the two. Finally, I will explore the biological basis to these causal relationships by studying blood levels of DNA methylation (epigenetics), gene expression and metabolites in the children.Findings from this work could help improve childhood health by providing better evidence about how the lifestyles of mothers and fathers shape childhood health and whether public health advice would be most effective if aimed at mothers, fathers or both parents.

虽然人们普遍认为，妇女在怀孕期间的生活方式和经历会影响孩子的发育和健康，但很少有可靠的科学研究支持这种联系。这种有限的证据基础意味着目前向孕妇提供的许多公共卫生建议是不一致的，令人困惑的，甚至可能是有害的。此外，有新的证据表明，男性的行为会影响未出生子女的健康，但目前向准父亲提供的公共卫生建议很少，科学证据更是少之又少，这项工作旨在更好地了解产前母亲和父亲的生活方式如何影响后代的健康和社会结果。调查结果将突出表明，改善儿童健康的干预措施最好是针对母亲、父亲还是父母双方。该项目利用了已经通过英国、荷兰、挪威和丹麦的几项大型出生队列研究收集的详细和多样化的数据;允许访问数十万人的丰富数据。利用这些数据，我将确定母亲和/或父亲在产前吸烟，饮酒，脂肪/糖摄入，咖啡因和体力活动是否与一系列儿童结局相关，包括出生体重，唇腭裂，体重指数，智商和教育程度。然后，我将应用几种最先进的统计方法来推断这些父母的健康行为是否真的导致了这些后代的结果，或者观察到的相关性是否是由于其他“混杂”因素（例如社会经济地位）而产生的。如果这种关系看起来是因果关系，我将使用几种统计方法来推断结果是由母亲的行为，父亲的行为，还是两者的结合造成的。最后，我将通过研究儿童血液中DNA甲基化水平（表观遗传学）、基因表达和代谢产物来探索这些因果关系的生物学基础。这项工作的结果可以通过提供更好的证据来帮助改善儿童健康，这些证据可以证明父母的生活方式如何影响儿童健康，以及针对母亲、父亲或父母双方的公共卫生建议是否最有效。