China 
Africa 
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Eating Disorders
Published in Cathy Laver-Bradbury, Margaret J.J. Thompson, Christopher Gale, Christine M. Hooper, Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 2021
Anorexia nervosa has a multi-factorial aetiology (Herle, 2020). Eating behaviours in childhood are considered as risk factors for eating disorder behaviours and diagnoses in adolescence. Researchers investigated associations between childhood eating behaviours during the first ten years of life and eating disorder behaviours, i.e. binge eating, purging, fasting and excessive exercise, and diagnoses, i.e. anorexia nervosa, binge-eating disorder, purging disorder and bulimia nervosa, at 16 years of age. Data from 4,760 participants from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children were included. They recorded parent and self-recorded questionnaires over eight time points. Objectively measured anthropometric data were obtained at 16 years.
The laboratory basis of medical genetics
Published in Peter S. Harper, The Evolution of Medical Genetics, 2019
Complementary to Biobank for childhood and early life, though smaller, is the ALSPAC (Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children) database, founded by Jean Golding, and based on a cohort of around 15,000 children born in Bristol during 1991–1992, together with their parents. These children are now nearly 30 years old and, like Biobank for adults, are starting to form a valuable resource for the study of both environmental and genetic factors in childhood disease.
Problems with puberty and its onset
Published in David J Cahill, Practical Patient Management in Reproductive Medicine, 2019
In the United Kingdom, in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), data were collected from children recruited at birth in 1991 and 1992, who have been followed up ever since (1,2). Progress through puberty was assessed using self-report questionnaires. For girls, 12% reported achieving Tanner breast stage 2 at age 8, while 98% reported being at stage 2 by age 13. For pubic hair, a Tanner stage 2 was reported by 4% and 95% of girls at ages 8 and 13, respectively. One girl (of 2953) reported having menarche by age 8; 60% had their menarche by age 13 (1). In this study, Only 2% of girls did not have secondary sex characteristics by the age of 13, but 40% of girls in their 13th year had not started menstruating.5%–12% of girls reported secondary sexual characteristics by age 8 (suggesting precocious puberty), although only one child had a period by the same age.Pubic hair develops later than breast growth.
Childhood gender-typed behaviour, sexual orientation, childhood abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder: a prospective birth-cohort study
Published in International Review of Psychiatry, 2022
Anna-Sophia Warren, Kimberley A. Goldsmith, Katharine A. Rimes
The sample was taken from a longitudinal birth-cohort study, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). Pregnant women resident in and around the city of Bristol in Avon, UK, with expected dates of delivery from 1st April 1991 to 31st December 1992 were invited to take part in the study. The initial number of pregnancies enrolled was 14,541 (for these at least one questionnaire has been returned or a “Children in Focus” clinic had been attended by 19/07/1999). Of these initial pregnancies, there was a total of 14,676 foetuses, resulting in 14,062 live births and 13,988 children who were alive at 1 year of age. Following further recruitment, the total numbers increased to 15,454 pregnancies and 15,589 foetuses. Of these, 14,901 children were alive at 1 year and took part in any data collection after 7 years of age (Boyd et al., 2013; Fraser et al., 2013). More details can be found on the study website, which includes a fully searchable data dictionary and variable search tool (http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/).
Perinatal photoperiod and childhood cancer: pooled results from 182,856 individuals in the international childhood cancer cohort consortium (I4C)
Published in Chronobiology International, 2020
Philip Lewis, Martin Hellmich, Lin Fritschi, Gabriella Tikellis, Peter Morfeld, J. Valérie Groß, Russell G. Foster, Ora Paltiel, Mark A. Klebanoff, Jean Golding, Sjurdur Olsen, Per Magnus, Anne-Louise Ponsonby, Martha S. Linet, Mary H. Ward, Neil Caporaso, Terence Dwyer, Thomas C. Erren
The I4C was established in 2005 to investigate childhood cancer etiologies with prospectively collected data – something that has been lacking in the field (Tikellis et al. 2018). The I4C currently pool data on some 190,000 mothers and their babies from six temporally diverse (recruitment years ranging between 1959 and 2009) and geographically diverse birth cohorts; namely, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC – UK), the Collaborative Perinatal Project (CPP – USA), the Danish National Birth Cohort (DNBC – Denmark), the Jerusalem Perinatal Study (JPS – Israel), the Norway Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study (MoBa – Norway), and the Tasmanian Infant Health Study (TIHS – Australia) cohorts (Table 1) (Tikellis et al. 2018). The DNBC and MoBa each contribute a random 10% sample of their total cohorts and all cases in a case-cohort design (Tikellis et al. 2018). Cancer was ascertained using national or regional cancer registries (or by examination of diagnostic summaries and death records for the CPP) (Tikellis et al. 2018). Harmonization and pooling of I4C data were performed at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute (Australia) with further organization and analyses of data for the current study performed at the University Hospital of Cologne (Germany) (Tikellis et al. 2018).
Age at puberty and accelerometer-measured physical activity: Findings from two independent UK cohorts
Published in Annals of Human Biology, 2020
Ahmed Ehakeem, Celia L. Gregson, Jon H. Tobias, Deborah A. Lawlor
The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) is a prospective birth cohort study, which recruited pregnant women residing in and around the city of Bristol in southwest England with an expected date of delivery between April 1991 and December 1992. In total, 15,247 eligible pregnancies were enrolled in ALSPAC (75% response), resulting in 14,973 live births, of whom 14,899 were alive at 1 year of age (Boyd et al. 2013; Fraser et al. 2013). The mothers, their partners and the index children have been followed-up with record linkage, questionnaires and dedicated research clinics since recruitment. The present study is concerned with offspring who attended one or more clinic assessments at mean ages 13.8 and 15.5 years (henceforth referred to as 14 and 16 years, respectively) at which they were invited to wear an accelerometer. Ethical approval was obtained from the ALSPAC Ethics and Law Committee and the Local Research Ethics Committees. Parental informed consent and child’s agreement were obtained for all participants. Details of all available data can be found in the ALSPAC study website which includes a fully searchable data dictionary and variable search tool (http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/).