A review of child health in the 1958 birth cohort: National Child Development Study

Abstract

In the week 3-9 March 1958, 98% of all births in England, Scotland and Wales (approximately 17,000) were studied in the Perinatal Mortality Survey. The follow-up of surviving children, known as the National Child Development Study, comprises four major sweeps at ages 7, 11, 16 and 23. Medical examinations were conducted at each age, except at 23 when health was self-reported. Details of the child's family background and socio-economic circumstances were recorded, together with assessments of their social development and educational attainment. Seventy-six per cent of the target population were interviewed at age 23. The health of subjects in the 1958 cohort has been described in over 200 publications but there is no comprehensive account of findings from birth to age 23. This overview attempts to redress this. As new data are gathered from the study subjects at age 33, opportunities will exist to investigate associations between childhood factors and health in midlife. Data on their partners and children will be included, allowing studies of inter-generational and family health. Further indications of changing illness patterns will be possible from comparisons with data collected on earlier and later born cohorts.

TERCpolymorphisms are associated both with susceptibility to colorectal cancer and with longer telomeres

“…We therefore examined whether rs10936599 alleles were associated with disease in patients with colorectal adenomas who had not developed CRC. Cases were derived from the Adenoma Prevention with Celecoxib adenoma prevention trial;36 controls were from the publicly available 1958 UK Birth Cohort 37. After stratifying for a family history of CRC, the major allele at rs10936599 was associated with an increased risk of adenomas (table 2; OR 0.883, 95% CI 0.80 to 0.98; χ 2 1 =5.30, p=0.011).…”

Evaluating the evidence for models of life course socioeconomic factors and cardiovascular outcomes: a systematic review

“…Additionally, selection bias due to either loss to follow-up or selective survival may distort findings. Studies using cohorts followed from birth or early life probably do not have these limitations [14,28,47,62,71,72,77,88-93] and may avoid the problem of changing occupational status and workplace functions across time if they establish SES scales at the time of measurement and update them as appropriate. As more studies analyze data from prospective cohorts starting in early life, concerns about unequal measurement error and the changing status of specific occupations should decrease [14,54,73,89,93,94].…”

Epilepsy in young people: 23 year follow up of the british national child development study

“…At follow up, information on health, social background, and education was collected by the national child development study; the response rate was 91% at ages 7 and 11, 87% at 16, and 76% at age 23 11 13 14…”