| Title: | Developmental Origins: exploring the Nature-Nurture Interplay |
| Lead Institution: | University of Bristol |
| Principal investigator: | Professor Stephanie von Hinke |
Application 74002
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About
It is increasingly acknowledged that both the prenatal and postnatal environment that one is exposed around birth affects individuals' health and well-being in older age. This project explores this relationship in more detail. First, we focus on the importance of different environments, such as early life nutrition and pollution, allowing us to quantify their role for later life health and well-being. Our focus is on both health and economic outcomes, since inequalities in these have been shown to be deeply intertwined and interdependent. For example, we will investigate cardiovascular disease, mental health, BMI as well as education. Second, we will investigate how individuals' genetic predisposition for these outcomes interacts with the environmental circumstances to generate inequalities in health and well-being in older age. This will allow us to examine whether, e.g., one's genetic predisposition can "protect" against adverse early life conditions, or vice versa, whether improvements in early life circumstances can overcome genetic disadvantage. In doing so, we will combine methods and ideas from the medical and social sciences. The project is funded by an ERC starting grant that takes approximately 60 months (however, it says 36 months below, since the UK Biobank system indicates that is the maximum duration). Our analyses will typically use all available observations in the UK Biobank that (i) are of European descent, (ii) have been successfully genotyped, (iii) have measures of the outcomes under investigation, and/or where we observe location of birth. The research has to potential to have a large public health impact. Indeed, showing the importance of the early life environment for one's health in older age has profound implications for policy. It would suggest that the optimal time to intervene to improve children's life chances is prenatally and in early childhood. In addition to academic papers, we will write policy briefings based on our work to disseminate our findings to non-academic and policy audiences.2 Publications
| Pub ID | Title | Author(s) | Year | Journal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11795 | Advantageous early-life environments cushion the genetic risk for ischemic heart disease | Samuel Baker (+3) | 2024 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |
| 10051 | An analysis of the accuracy of retrospective birth location recall using sibling data | Stephanie von Hinke (+1) | 2024 | Nature Communications |
Enabling scientific discoveries that improve human health