A Comprehensive Overview of the Physical Health of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study Cohort at Baseline

Abstract

Physical health in childhood is crucial for neurobiological as well as overall development, and can shape long-term outcomes into adulthood. The landmark, longitudinal Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development StudySM (ABCD study®), was designed to investigate brain development and health in almost 12,000 youth who were recruited when they were 9–10 years old and will be followed through adolescence and early adulthood. The overall goal of this paper is to provide descriptive analyses of physical health measures in the ABCD study at baseline, including but not limited to sleep, physical activity and sports involvement, and body mass index. Further this summary will describe how physical health measures collected from the ABCD cohort compare with current normative data and clinical guidelines. We propose this data set has the potential to facilitate clinical recommendations and inform national standards of physical health in this age group. This manuscript will also provide important information for ABCD users and help guide analyses investigating physical health including new avenues for health disparity research as it pertains to adolescent and young adult development.

Relating neighborhood deprivation to childhood obesity in the ABCD Study®: evidence for theories of neuroinflammation and neuronal stress

“…Yearly height (nearest 0.1inch) and weight (nearest 0.1lb) assessments (measured twice, a third was collected in cases of large discrepancy) were gathered by a trained researcher. The closest two measurements were averaged and converted into BMI (kg/m 2 ) and BMI percentiles according to the CDC’s sex-age-height-weight specific growth charts (Kuczmarski et al, 2002) for clinical interpretations, only as they are prone to several biases (Hendrickson & Pitt, 2021; Palmer et al, 2021).…”

Developmental Milestones of Infancy and Associations with Later Childhood Neurodevelopmental Outcomes in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study

“…The percentage of delays in milestone attainment in our study using the ABCD study is lower than the national estimates of development delays when applying the CDC guidelines on milestone attainment [ 58 ]. This might partly reflect errors in maternal recall or that the ABCD study has excluded children with several major neurological disorders, extreme birth outcomes, or birth complications that resulted in hospitalization for more than 1 month in the baseline enrollment [ 14 , 15 ]. Our study shows that a delay in milestone attainment, even when using subclinical cutoff values in a sample of children without several major neurological disorders, is predictive of childhood cognitive and behavioral functioning.…”

“…The public-school recruitment approach and a stratified probability sampling strategy were utilized to capture the sociodemographic diversity of the US population. Children with following conditions were excluded from the ABCD study at baseline recruitment (details may be found in ABCD release note 1.0): child not fluent in English; MRI contraindication (e.g., irremovable ferromagnetic implants or dental appliances, claustrophobia); gestational age < 28 weeks or birth weight < 1200 g; birth complications that resulted in hospitalization for more than 1 month; current diagnosis of schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder, mental retardation/intellectual disability; or known alcohol/substance use disorder [ 14 , 15 ]. For the current study, we focus on 5360 singleton children with a baseline parental questionnaire completed by their biological mothers that included information on early-life developmental milestones.…”

Access to quality health resources and environmental toxins affect the relationship between brain structure and BMI in a sample of pre and early adolescents

“…The closest two measurements were averaged and converted into BMI (kg/m 2 ) and BMI percentiles according to the CDC's sex-age-height-weight specific growth charts ( 36 ). Given the biases surrounding z-score and percentiles ( 38 , 39 ), these are provided only for clinical interpretations while BMI was used in the statistical analyses.…”