Word: alspac
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...experiment in which some kids starve and others overeat. (You also wouldn't want to wait 60 years for the results.) By coincidence, Pembrey had access to another incredible trove of genetic information. He had long been on the board of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), a unique research project based at the University of Bristol, in England. Founded by Pembrey's friend Jean Golding, an epidemiologist at the university, ALSPAC has followed thousands of young people and their parents since before the kids were born, in 1991 and 1992. For the study, Golding...
...ALSPAC parents and kids have undergone extensive medical and psychological testing every year since. Recently, I met an ALSPAC baby, Tom Gibbs, who is now a sturdy 17-year-old. I accompanied him as clinicians measured his height (178 cm, or 5 ft. 8 in., not including spiked blond hair), the bone density of his left femur (1.3 g/sq cm, which is above average) and a host of other physical traits...
...this data collection was designed from the outset to show how the individual's genotype combines with environmental pressures to influence health and development. ALSPAC data have offered several important insights: baby lotions containing peanut oil may be partly responsible for the rise in peanut allergies; high maternal anxiety during pregnancy is associated with the child's later development of asthma; little kids who are kept too clean are at higher risk for eczema. (See the most common hospital mishaps...
...That means the sons of men who smoke in prepuberty will be at higher risk for obesity and other health problems well into adulthood. It's very likely these boys will also have shorter life spans, just as the children of the Overkalix overeaters did. "The coherence between the ALSPAC and Overkalix results in terms of the exposure-sensitive periods and sex specificity supports the hypothesis that there is a general mechanism for transmitting information about the ancestral environment down the male line," Pembrey, Bygren, Golding and their colleagues concluded in the European Journal of Human Genetics paper. In other...
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