Children of the 90s: Coming of age

http://www.nature.com/news/children-of-the-90s-coming-of-age-1.10396?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20120417

“It's the deepest phenotyping and biobank resource of any large birth cohort.”

Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents And Children (ALSPAC)
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avon_Longitudinal_Study_of_Parents_and_Children

This library is the harvest from an unusual study of humanity. In 1990, researchers started to collect tissues and detailed information from more than 14,500 pregnant women in this western British city and its surrounding region of Avon. The women filled in more than 100 pages of questionnaires about their health, relationships, work and home. After birth, researchers tracked the children's development through surveys, clinical examinations and biological samples. They know what the kids ate, when they first talked, how often they fell sick and when a parent read to them — or deserted them. They know when the children started to hit puberty, drink alcohol, have sex and leave home. In that wealth of data — collected at a cost of some £42 million (US$67 million) so far — they are tracing how genetic and environmental factors in the children's early years affect their later ones.

One showed that eating oily fish during pregnancy was associated with better eye and cognitive development in children^{5, 6}. Another helped to cement advice that babies should be put to sleep on their backs to reduce the risk of cot death, by showing that this sleeping position did not cause any developmental delays⁷. A third showed the first association between peanut allergy — an emerging epidemic in Western countries — and peanut oil in baby lotions⁸. Manufacturers soon started identifying the ingredient on labels.