Lifestyle and health in the Hertfordshire Cohort Study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Lifestyle and health in the Hertfordshire Cohort Study
IRAS ID
210644
Contact name
Elaine Dennison
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Southampton
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 11 months, 30 days
Research summary
The Hertfordshire Cohort Study comprises a unique cohort of approximately 2500 men and women born between 1931-1939, who still reside in the county and with retrospective birth and early life data available from ledgers. Previous studies within the cohort have shown a strong relationship between growth in early life and the risk of common age-related disorders such as osteoarthritis, osteoporosis and sarcopenia. We wish to contact a subset of the whole cohort, and ask them to complete a self-administered questionnaire, in order to collect further data on adult diet, lifestyle, physical activity and general health. This will allow further study into health across the life course, and specifically how the effects of growth in early life are affected by adult environment.
Recently, we and others have started to investigate the mechanism for how early life environment influences adult disease. One active area of study is in epigenetics. The theory of transgenerational epigenetics implies that maternal
environment during pregnancy can be transmitted to offspring and affect subsequent phenotype. This area now requires further research to explore how non-genomic traits can be passed from one generation to the next.
We would therefore also like to explore the feasibility of extending the Hertfordshire Cohort Study into an intergenerational study. This is a very special opportunity to investigate this mechanism. In order to do so, we would
need to recruit the children and grandchildren of current participants although the feasibility of such a study design is uncertain. We would therefore like to take this opportunity to contact surviving Hertfordshire cohort participants to
obtain demographic details of family members and also ask whether the participant would be happy to pass on our study details to their offspring. This will allow us to consider whether it would be possible to do an intergenerational study.REC name
London - Westminster Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/LO/1225
Date of REC Opinion
28 Jun 2016
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion