Perinatal, Obstetric & Paediatric Epidemiology (POPE)

DNBC management

DNBC is a cohort of almost 100,000 individuals, born 1996-2003, who have been followed since intrauterine life.

Contact: Professor Anne-Marie Nybo Andersen (Principle Investigator of DNBC) and Katrine Strandberg-Larsen (Co-PI of DNBC)
Visit: www.dnbc.dk 

The 18 years follow-up

The 18-year follow-up of DNBC youth focused on mental health among the young participants and was completes December 2021.

Contact: Associate professor Katrine Strandberg-Larsen (Co-PI of DNBC)

COVID-19

The COVID-19 survey within the DNBC was initiated in the third week of the national lockdown. All participants, both the youths and the mothers, of whom we had information of private mail and/or phone numbers, were contacted. Participants completing the survey were re-invited up to 7 times during the initial lockdown. Approximately one year subsequent to the initial lockdown, all participants were invited for wave 8.

Contact: PhD fellow Andrea Joensen

The 25 year follow-up

The 25-years follow-up of the DNBC participants was commenced in June 2023.
This follow-up will focus on different aspects of life in the mid-twenties like living situation, social relationships, sleep, mental health, physical well being and much more.

Contact: Professor Anne-Marie Nybo Andersen and Associate professor Katrine Strandberg-Larsen 

GlutenFyn

All DNBC participants living on the island of Funen were invited for a clinical examination with the aim of exploring the prevalence of Celiac Disease, causes and consequences.

Contact: Professor Steffen Husby (Syddansk Universitet) 

The Corona Pandemic and everyday life

This study is part of the research project “Standing together – at a distance. How Danes are living with the Corona Crisis” and a sub research from the Danish National Birth Cohort. We explore how the Corona Pandemic affect Danes’ mental well-being and everyday life, and how or if it changes over time.

Contact: Associate professor Katrine Strandberg-Larsen and PhD fellow Andrea Joensen

LifeSpine

The LifeSpine research program is designed to identify potential domains for intervention and relevant target groups for prevention of childhood spinal pain.

Contact: Professor Anne-Marie Nybo Andersen 

Indoor environment and child health

The aim of the RealChild project is to investigate the various impacts of housing and indoor environment on children’s health in the DNBC. The 11-year DNBC follow-up has a large number of questionnaire items regarding the indoor home environment, which is the primary source used to characterize children’s exposures. The outcomes of primary focus are related to infectious diseases, asthma, and mental health.

Contacts: PhD Fellow Jonathan Groot and Professor Anne-Marie Nybo Andersen

Pets and respiratory health

Should your family get a cat to prevent asthma – or get rid of it? And what about dogs? Do family history or genes affect the answer to these questions?

Contact: Post Doc Angela Pinot de Moira

EATus

Read about the project under Mental health in youth.

PIA Psoriasis in Children

Risk factors and prognosis of psoriasis in children.

Contact: Professor Anne-Marie Nybo Andersen or Professor Lone Skov (Gentofte Hospital)

Birthcohorts.net

The aim of the interactive website www.Birthcohorts.net is to facilitate exchange of knowledge and collaboration between birth cohorts and researchers. In addition, we would like to provide administrators, policy makers and other stakeholders information about available birth cohort data on health and its determinants.

Contact: Professor Anne-Marie Nybo Andersen
Visit: www.birthcohorts.net

Horizon 2020 projects

The POPE group is a partner in the Horizon 2020-funded projects EUCAN-Connect and ATHLETE, which are cross-cohort collaborations bringing together data from pregnancy and child cohorts from across Europe, Canada and Australia to facilitate studies on the influence of early-life exposures on cardio-metabolic, respiratory and mental health outcomes.
EUCAN-Connect is focused on the infrastructure and creating a sustainable framework for long-term collaboration, while ATHLETE is focused on studying how different early-life exposures influence health later on.

Contact: Professor Anne-Marie Nybo Andersen (EUCAN-Connect), Associate Professor Katrine Strandberg-Larsen (ATHLETE), Associate Professor Marie Pedersen (ATHLETE)
Visit: https://eucanconnect.eu and https://athleteproject.eu

EU Child Cohort Network

The network is a collaboration between more than 20 birth cohorts that enables federated analyses of harmonized longitudinal birth cohort data.

The ECCN was established within the LifeCycle project but is now used and enriched within the ATHLETE and EUCAN-Connect consortium. The harmonized data from all participating cohorts are made FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable).

In order to make data interoperable, participating cohorts are required to harmonise and pseudonymise their individual level data. That is, using the original data collected by cohorts to create new measures that are comparable across cohorts, and replacing directly identifiable information, which could be used to identify an individual, with a pseudonym.

In order to make data findable and reusable, participating cohorts are required to provide and upload harmonisation documentation to open and searchable online variable catalogues.

Finally, in order to make data accessible, participating cohorts are required to set up an infrastructure where harmonised and pseudonymised cohort data are stored locally on servers and researchers with approved research studies can conduct federated analyses via a Central Analysis Server.

Contact: Professor Anne-Marie Nybo Andersen (Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences) or Associate Professor Katrine Strandberg-Larsen (ATHLETE)
Visit: Catalogue for LifeCycle, catalogue for EUCAN-Connect, catalogue for ATHLETE

Data+ project

EUChild Cohort Network, EUCAN-Connect and ATHLETE apply DataSHIELD, which is a software solution for secure collaboration and can be used to conduct federated analyses. This Data+ project, funded by the University of Copenhagen, explores the opportunities as well as ethico-legal challenges and implications of using DataSHIELD for cross-border analysis of sensitive birth cohort data.

Contact: Professor Anne-Marie Nybo Andersen (Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences) or Professor Mette Hartlev (Faculty of Law)
Visit: https://datashield.org/

Maternal stress and risk of preterm birth

Contact: Professor Anne-Marie Nybo Andersen

Is gestational age at birth causally related to body dimensions later in life?

The project investigates the association of gestational age at birth with later body dimensions from infancy through adolescence in three separate, yet related, research projects: (1) across 16 birth cohorts in more than 250,000 singletons using federated analysis within DataSHIELD, (2) from a life-course perspective with trajectories of height and body mass index in the Danish National Birth Cohort, and (3) in relation to birth size focusing on the risk of underweight and overweight at 18 years.

Contact: Professor Anne-Marie Nybo Andersen

EATus

The EATus program investigates whether there is empirically evidence for a spectral nature of Eating Disorders, develop algorithms to predict for whom early symptoms will persist, progress into EDs or resolve across adolescence, and finally explore the etiological mechanisms underlying EDs.

Contact: Associate Professor Katrine Strandberg-Larsen and PhD Fellow Andrea Joensen.

YRSA

The YRSA project investigates risk factors of suicide attempts and the provided mental health care to young people in suicidal crisis. Furthermore, the project identify barriers and facilitating factors related to seeking professional mental health treatment in the aftermath of adolescent suicidal behavior.

Contact: Senior Researcher Trine Madsen (Psychiatrics Gentofte Hospital)

Mother-Infant relations

How does the early mother-child bonding affect mental health in childhood and adolescence

Contact: PhD Fellow Ida Scheel Rasmussen or Associate Professor Katrine Strandberg-Larsen

The DanCHASE project (Danish Child Health And Social Equity project)

In this project we examine how health conditions during pregnancy and childhood vary according to social conditions.

Contact: Professor Anne-Marie Nybo Andersen or Professor David Taylor-Robinson.

Social Equity and Child Health Outcomes: addressing drivers of child healthinequalities to improve life-course health and reduce social inequalities (ECHO):

This research focuses on understanding the drivers of health inequalities in childhood and their long-term impact. The project addresses important health conditions during early life, childhood, and young adulthood, with an initial focus on child mortality and mental health disorders. The goal is to quantify the potential impact of policies on reducing inequalities in child health and identify the best approaches and timing for interventions. The research is part of a larger international project led by David Taylor-Robinson at the Liverpool University aiming to inform international policy decisions.

Contact: Postdoc Stine Kjær Urhøj and Professor David Taylor-Robinson.

The WELLIFE project: Welfare state life courses; Social inequalities in the co-evolution of employment, health and critical life events

The WELLIFE project is a NordForsk funded project using Nordic register data to explore the co-evolution of health and social factors over the life course. Social conditions, such as income, employment and family resources, matter for health, and health matters for participation in society, employment and economic well-being. These associations are well known. What is not that well known is whether social policy, including labour market policies, modifies the extent to which the onset of illness affect living conditions, in particular employment. Also, the role of social policy in the extent to which critical life events, such as job loss, divorce or health shocks within the close family, translate into poor health and worse living conditions for parents and children. These are some of the questions investigated in the WELLIFE project.

Contact: Postdoc Stine Kjær Urhøj and  Professor Anne-Marie Nybo Andersen

MAMAACT is a universal complex intervention project that seeks to strengthen pregnant women’s response to disease symptoms, and to improve the communication between women and the health care system. Register-based studies have supported the intervention and quantitative analyses of the intervention is being conducted.

Contact: PostDoc, Trine Damsted Rasmussen or Anne-Marie Nybo Andersen
Visit: mamaact.ku.dk