MRC Centre of Epidemiology for Child Health

How to find us

How to find us


MRC Centre of Epidemiology for Child Health
UCL Institute of Child Health
30 Guilford Street
London, WC1N 1EH
Tel: +44 (0)20 7905 2362

Great Ormond Street Hospital


Publications

Key publications that have come from research conducted either through the centre or in collaboration and using the 1958 birth cohort resource.

View list of publications

External websites

International collaboration

The 1958 Cohort is part of a number of research consortia of cohort studies, including:

EAGLE

The EArly Genetics and Lifecourse Epidemiology Consortium

SUNLIGHT

Study of Underlying Genetic Determinants of Vitamin D and Highly Related Traits

UCLEB

The UCL-London-School-Edinburgh-Bristol consortium of population-based prospective studies

1958 Birth Cohort

The 1958 Birth Cohort includes more than 17,000 individuals who were born in Britain in one week in March 1958. Information about their lives was gathered at birth and ages 7, 11, 16, 23, 33, 42, 45, 46 and 50 years. An additional 920 immigrants born at the same time were recruited to the cohort and followed from either  7, 11 or 16 onwards.

Researchers have been able to use this rich source of data collected across the participants’ lives to date to conduct valuable research on how environmental, social and developmental factors influence our health and wellbeing.  

Collecting biomedical data

In 2001 the MRC funded the collection of biomedical data from the cohort. This had not been collected since the participants were 16. This project took seven years to complete, and succeeded in gathering biomedical data from more than 9,000 individuals from the cohort from 2002 to 2004 when they were 44-45 years old. It included the testing and measurement of:

  • height and sitting height
  • weight
  • waist and hips
  • blood pressure
  • lung function
  • vision
  • hearing

And the collection of:

  • saliva
  • blood

These data have become an important resource for life course research in epidemiology, genetic epidemiology and other disciplines, both within our centre and around the world.

Professor Chris Power was joint principal scientfic investigator on the biomedical collection with Professor David Strachan (St George’s, University of London), with co-applicants Professor John Bynner (Institute of Education) and Dr Gillian Prior (National Centre for Social Research).

She was part of the initial application to the MRC for funding, and worked across the lifespan of the project from design and data collection to the analysis of the information collected.

Professor Power is currently using this data to investigate the relationship between obesity from child to adulthood and risk factors (e.g. blood lipids) for developing cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes in mid-life, as well as to examine how levels of activity in adulthood contribute to the risk of developing these conditions.

(The 1958 birth cohort  is also known as The National Child Development Study)

Page last modified on 31 oct 11 17:31