To date several studies suggests that adult disorders can be traced back to early life stress, often referred to as the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD).
Both animal and human studies have found exposure to prenatal stress to be associated with later adult disorders. Thus, investigating early risk pathways is crucial for prevention, as health-economic calculations show that initiatives introduced early in life have a greater impact on mental health, and are much cheaper, than measures that are implemented later.
With TRACE we aim to examine Early Life Stress and child and adolescent psychopathology. TRACE use data from the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort study.
This sample is part of the Norwegian Mother, Father Child Cohort Study (MoBa). MoBa has been carried out by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, and is a cohort consisting of 114 000 pregnancies recruited from 1999 to 2009. For the majority of the participants, blood samples (DNA, plasma, whole blood) have been collected from the umbilical cord at birth. RNA (~45000 tempus tubes) has been collected since 2005. Information on medication use, sociodemographic characteristics and environmental early life stress was collected by questionnaires at the 17th and 30th week of gestation. In addition, to follow-up data, we will examine psychopathology in siblings age 3 to 8 years. We collaborate with The Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo Sequencing Centre, King’s College London, Manchester University and Carleton University, Canada.
The Project is supported by RCN Grant: 301004 and Promenta Research Centre Grant: 288083.
Re-thinking the programming hypothesis
Prenatal maternal anxiety/depression, DNA methylation and child psychopathology. A sibling design
Parent-of-Origin effects
Examining Gene haplotype associations in parent-child- trios and child psychopathology
Environmental and polygenetic risks
Environmental risks and polygenetic risks interactions in child psychopathology