̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - paediatrics

Changemakers in cancer: Jessica Taylor

zs332 — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 07:00:15 +0000

Dr Jessica Taylor’s ambition is to change the outcome of paediatric brain cancer. She wants children not just to survive but to survive well.

New milestone for specialist children’s hospital in the East of England

ta385 — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 10:00:16 +0000

̽��ֱ��Project had its Outline Business Case approved in principle by NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care on 29 September 2023. With this approval, which is subject to a review of the Project’s capital funding in April 2024, work can now commence on the Full Business Case for the Project.

̽��ֱ��hospital, which was awarded planning permission in March 2022, is being built on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, but will care for children and young people across the whole of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire.

It will be the first hospital designed to truly provide mental and physical health care together, delivered by staff who are trained in both. While the hospital will be built in Cambridge it will act as a central hub, working with services all over the East of England to provide care and support for children who may never visit the hospital itself.

Dr Rob Heuschkel, Cambridge Children’s Hospital Clinical Lead for Physical Health said: “This is fantastic news for children across the East of England – the only region without a specialist children’s hospital.

“We know there is widespread support across the East of England for this Hospital – from children and their families to our regional colleagues and our regional MPs. Now is the time for us to all work together to turn our plans into reality. I can’t wait to get started on the next stage of this Project. “

̽��ֱ��government committed £100m to Cambridge Children’s Hospital in 2018, under the Sustainability and Transformation Partnership scheme, and the project is on track to meet its target of an additional £100m of philanthropy and fundraising.

Health Minister Lord Markham said: “We are investing in over 70 major new upgrades of NHS facilities across the country so patients can access high quality care in state-of-the-art hospitals, both now and in the years to come. I’m pleased Cambridge Children’s Hospital is now starting on the final stage of its business case with construction planned to begin next year.

“Backed by £100 million of government funding, this hospital will be the first specialist children’s hospital for the East of England and will bring mental and physical healthcare services together to benefit thousands of young people.”

Dr Cathy Walsh, Cambridge Children’s Hospital Clinical Lead for Mental Health, said: “There’s a long way still to go but this is an exciting moment in our journey to building a truly integrated children’s hospital.

“Our young people urgently need a new type of care, delivered by staff who are trained in both mental and physical health care. Cambridge Children’s Hospital will completely transform the future of healthcare for children and their families from across this region.”

̽��ֱ��hospital will also house a ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge world-class research facility focussed on detecting and preventing childhood illness.

Professor David Rowitch, Head of the Department of Paediatrics at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Cambridge Children’s Hospital Research Lead, said: “Cambridge Children’s Hospital will use cutting-edge innovations in genomic science to detect origins of physical and mental health conditions and develop a new model of preventive medicine in paediatrics. We will foster game-changing breakthroughs in life sciences research that will have an impact across the globe.

“Together we can detect childhood disease early or prevent it altogether, personalise health care and deliver it closer to home.”

Members of Cambridge Children’s Hospital Network, which is made up of children, young people and parents from across the region, have been a crucial part of designing the future hospital, and helping to shape how the facility might look and feel like.

Sarah Cobb, 19 from near Cambridge, has multiple disabilities and is visually impaired. She has been involved in the Project for a number of years. She said: “As someone with lifelong health conditions, who’s spent a lot of time in hospital as a child, a teenager and now a young adult, I’m delighted that Cambridge Children’s Hospital has reached this brilliant milestone.

“I feel really honoured to be part of such an inspirational project. This hospital means so much to me and will make such a difference to the mental and physical health of children and young people in future.”

Work continues on finalising the costs and remaining funding streams for this brand new hospital. We will now start developing the final stage of the business case for Cambridge Children’s Hospital’s– the Full Business Case.

Cambridge Children’s Hospital, which will be the first specialist children’s hospital for the East of England, has been given the green light to proceed to the final stage of its business case development. This means that pre-construction works can begin on the site of the new hospital, opposite the Rosie Maternity Hospital on Robinson Way, early next year.

Together we can detect childhood disease early or prevent it altogether, personalise health care and deliver it closer to home

David Rowitch

Artist's impression of the entrance to the future Cambridge Children’s Hospital

About Cambridge Children’s Hospital

Cambridge Children’s Hospital will be the first hospital designed to truly provide mental and physical health care together, delivered by staff who are trained in both.

It is the first specialist children’s hospital for the East of England, the only region in the UK without one.

̽��ֱ��hospital will fully integrate physical and mental healthcare services under one roof to provide a whole new way of caring for children and young people aged 0-19, including those with cancer.

Cambridge Children’s Hospital will be a national exemplar. Housing ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge research institutes focused on the prevention and early diagnosis of disease, the hospital will deliver game-changing advances in life sciences research.

̽��ֱ��hospital will be built on Europe’s leading life sciences campus, the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, and is being co-designed with the help of young people, families and healthcare professionals.

Established by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, the hospital is a partnership which brings together clinical expertise and world-leading knowledge.

̽��ֱ��Campaign for Cambridge Children’s Hospital, a partnership between Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust (ACT), Head to Toe Charity and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge (CUDAR), is committed to raising £100 million from philanthropy and fundraising.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Man on a mission to beat cancer

cjb250 — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 11:09:53 +0000

On the children’s ward at Newcastle General Hospital in 1986, medical student Richard Gilbertson got his first taste of life as a paediatric oncologist. He looked around the ward and saw a child in a bed, in a dark corner. “She has a medulloblastoma that has returned,” the consultant said. “What can we do for her?” asked Gilbertson, who had been fascinated by medulloblastomas – one of the commonest malignant brain tumours in children – since his first year of medicine, when he was randomly assigned to do a project on them. “Nothing,” the consultant replied. “ ̽��ֱ��only thing we can do is let her die in peace.”

“I got so angry,” remembers Gilbertson – now Professor – sitting in his airy office on the first floor of the vast glass-and-steel Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute (CRUK CI) at the Li Ka Shing Centre. “It was the 1980s and there was nothing we could do for a child with a brain tumour. That was completely unacceptable to me. And I know it sounds contrived, but I made up my mind from that moment that I was going to do something.”

That ‘something’ was initially a number dreamed up in a Newcastle pub: relaxing with a beer after a long week, Gilbertson and his fellow medical students decided that by the time they retired, they should take personal responsibility for implementing a 15 per cent reduction in mortality, from whatever disease they chose.

Gilbertson never forgot that pledge and, 30 years later, you could argue that he’s fulfilled it. As a result of his insights into how children’s brain tumours behave, more children than ever before are surviving them. However this, he argues, is because of better patient care and understanding of the condition, not more effective treatments, earlier detection or prevention. These are the things, he says, that will fulfil his latest ambition: a world without cancer.

When Gilbertson began studying brain tumours, they were all regarded as the same disease, and needing the same treatment. He proved that the main types of tumour not only behaved differently from each other but are also totally different diseases.

“All tumours generate cells, and these cells speak different languages – express different genes – in the same way that we all speak with an accent,” he explains. “So say we had a French person, an Irish person, and a Chinese person who all spoke English, we could identify their country of origin from their accent. We thought: if we can first identify the ‘accent’ that normal cells in the brain speak with and compare them with the ‘accent’ of the tumour cells, we can trace the origin of those cells back – just like we hear a Cockney speak and we know he’s from London.”

When Gilbertson and his team studied cancer ‘accents’ in brain tumours, they fell very clearly into four different categories – four different diseases arising from four different cell types. One tumour has blood vessels like sieves, for example. It’s an achilles heel that doctors can exploit – chemotherapy drugs in the bloodstream can permeate the tumour far more efficiently.

̽��ֱ��World Health Organisation (WHO) has now adopted Gilbertson’s classification, and children around the world now receive treatment matched to their category of tumour.

All this was achieved while Gilbertson was Cancer Centre and Scientific Director at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, one of the world’s leading children’s cancer hospitals, where he worked for 15 years. Yet his research seemed to be taking him more and more in the direction of not just paediatric cancer but the entirety of cancer. “Of course, they are different diseases. But I firmly believe that cancer needs to be thought of as a continuum. What you’re looking at is how development goes wrong, whether you’re seven or 70.”

In 2015, Gilbertson was appointed as Li Ka Shing Chair of Oncology in Cambridge and Director of the Cambridge Cancer Centre, with access to both child and adult cancers and, he says, “the best minds in the world”. These minds – physicists, engineers, chemists – are, right now, working out how Gilbertson’s dream of a cancer-free world can become reality.

There are big ideas to be worked on. “One of the things that’s always puzzled me as a paediatric oncologist is: why don’t children get cancer more?” Gilbertson says. “After all, as children grow, they experience massive cell proliferation. Cancer happens when a cell’s DNA goes wrong. Think of them as accelerators that make cells divide too much, with no brakes. Yet paediatric cancers are quite rare – much more so than adult cancer. People say it’s because children don’t smoke or live for 70 years or do those things which cause mistakes in a cell’s DNA. I don’t buy that. I think it’s partly true. But there must be something that protects children in the design of their cells from actually getting cancer.”

Gilbertson and his team have just completed a seven-year study identifying the cells that make cancers in children and adults. When his researchers challenged healthy cells with the mutations that drive cancer, they found that children’s stem cells appeared to be intrinsically resistant.

There was something about them that stopped them making cancer – unlike the adult cells, which weren’t resistant. “That’s terribly exciting, because if I can look into a child’s cells and work out the biology that is protecting that child’s cells from cancer, then maybe we could reproduce that in an adult cell with a drug. And if you do that, you’ve got a preventative for cancer. We are working on that right now, and it’s something I will be pursuing.”

All possibilities are explored. Gilbertson’s lab is currently screening around 1.2 million compounds, found everywhere from the depths of the Amazonian rainforest to the bottom of the ocean. Out of these, four have possibilities as potential treatments and are being developed. Then there are the drugs that already exist, that have been shown to be effective against other cancers: these are being screened as well. Taking a chemical compound from a tree, crushing it up and putting it on cancerous cells is one avenue of exploration, to be sure. But making that compound into a drug that a patient can actually take is a very long process. It’s far quicker to take a drug that already exists and give it to that child with the brain tumour. “It’s a bit like when your roof is leaking and you put a saucepan on the floor,” says Gilbertson. “ ̽��ֱ��saucepan wasn’t designed to do that. It was designed to cook carrots. But it’s actually useful to catch water in.”

Innovations around early diagnosis are also being examined. Just 25 per cent of people who are diagnosed with one of the eight most common cancers in the late stages will be alive 10 years later. Diagnose the same cancers just a few months earlier, when the disease is in its early stages, and 80 per cent of those patients will be alive in 10 years. ̽��ֱ��earlier you diagnose, the better chance of a cure. And here, again, it’s all about understanding the tumour, working out its strengths and its weaknesses, finding the things it does that can be turned against it.

Gilbertson points to the work of Professor Rebecca Fitzgerald at the MRC Cancer Unit, a partner of the Cancer Centre, as a perfect example. She developed the cytosponge – the equivalent of a cervical smear for the oesophagus, a notoriously hard area in which to spot pre-cancerous changes. It’s a tiny pill containing an even tinier sponge on a ‘fishing line’. ̽��ֱ��patient swallows it, the pill hits the stomach and dissolves, leaving the sponge behind. ̽��ֱ��line is then pulled up, with the sponge scraping a cell sample from the oesophagus on the way up. “What we will see increasingly in cancer is a push towards diagnosing early, and people becoming increasingly used to going through their GPs,” he says. “If you asked my dad’s generation if they had their blood pressure checked regularly, they would say no. Those kind of early diagnostics didn’t exist then but now they do, and are common practice. I think you will see that in cancer.”

Yesterday, Gilbertson mentions, he was meeting with the inventor of a breath tester to detect lung cancer. Tumour cells have a different way of consuming food than normal cells, he explains, so they produce slightly different waste products. Some of these are volatile, and these tell-tale compounds will appear in the breath – so they can be detected. ̽��ֱ��team are also developing tests for circulating tumour DNA. It’s now known that DNA isn’t present just in cells: it floats around the bloodstream. Tumours are caused by mutations in that DNA: if you create a blood test sensitive enough to detect those mistakes, you could identify that tumour before the person even starts to show symptoms.

Imagine, he says, the conversations around cancer in the future. “If people never get cancer as we know it, they’ll be saying: ‘Oh, I’ve been diagnosed with gastric cancer but the doctor’s just fixed it.’ Imagine a world where well-person clinics test accurately for the earliest cancers every year, rather than patients walking around with tumours inside them for years on end – and only when they get ill do we do something about it. Imagine a child going into a clinic for a five-year checkup, and having a blood test which reveals she has cancer. You intervene with a relatively non-toxic treatment – even minor surgery – and that’s it.” A world without cancer, where the dark corners of the ward are banished to the history books. It’s a pledge worth pursuing.

This article is taken from CAM – the Cambridge Alumni Magazine, edition 79.

Thirty years ago, Professor Richard Gilbertson pledged to implement a 15 per cent reduction in mortality from children’s brain cancer. This is the story of what happened next.

Interview: Lucy Jolin

Carol Sachs

Professor Richard Gilbertson from the CRUK Cambridge Institute

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Parent-led tool opens up NHS children's heart surgery data to families

sc604 — Mon, 20 Jun 2016 23:00:39 +0000

Researchers are calling for the end to an era of confusion and alarm about children's heart surgery statistics by launching an innovative communication tool that will help people make sense of published survival data about children’s heart surgery in the UK and Ireland.

̽��ֱ��website, Understanding Children’s Heart Surgery Outcomes, which launches today, shows decision makers and parents that hospitals should not be ranked by their survival rates, because hospitals treat different patients — high performing hospitals can have lower survival rates simply because they are taking on the most complex cases. An individual hospital’s actual survival rate should only be compared to its own predicted range, which is determined by the complexity of the procedures it undertakes, among other factors. ̽��ֱ��website also sets out why if a hospital's survival rate is below its predicted range, it need not indicate alarm, but rather serves as a trigger for further investigation.

̽��ֱ��website was developed by Christina Pagel from ̽��ֱ�� College London and Sir David Spiegelhalter from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, in collaboration with the charity Sense about Science and experimental psychologist Tim Rakow from King’s College London. It explains a risk adjustment method known as PRAiS (Partial Risk Adjustment in Surgery).

“This website draws a line under an era of poor risk communication of hospital surgery statistics,” said Tracey Brown, director of Sense about Science. “In 2013 over-interpretation of faulty data resulted in temporary hospital closure of Leeds General Infirmary's paediatric heart unit. Parents and children were faced with all the additional stress, risks and costs of travelling further for operations, and for others the horrendous unnecessary guilt as they wondered if their child’s outcome would have been better at another unit. There could not be a stronger case for professionals and decision makers using the risk adjustment model and communicating it well.”

Each hospital that performs children’s heart surgery in the UK and Ireland has had its overall survival rates published by the National Congenital Heart Disease Audit (NCHDA) since 2013. ̽��ֱ��researchers used PRAiS to calculate a predicted range of survival for each specific hospital, taking into account the complexity of each individual child’s medical condition and surgery. No hospital will have exactly the same predicted range of survival as another hospital, because each hospital treated different children.

However, the report the NCHDA publishes is lengthy, hard to find and hard to understand without expert knowledge. Sense about Science ran user-testing workshops to involve the public, patients’ families and medical charities in co-designing the website with Pagel and Spiegelhalter, a first in this area.

“There is an understandable urge to put hospitals in a league table when comparing survival rates,” said Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge. “But rather than try and directly compare hospitals with each other, we need to compare a hospital’s survival rate with what we would predict it to be, taking into account how severe their cases are. This is a tricky idea but, with the help of many families, I think we have made it clear.”

“Because different hospitals treat different children and some children can have more complex medical problems than others, it is not valid to directly compare survival rates between hospitals,” said Pagel, Reader in Operational Research at UCL, who helped develop the formula the NHS uses to evaluate hospital survival rates. “We involved families from the beginning of the project and throughout to help us researchers communicate these complicated concepts clearly. I definitely learned that incorporating their feedback was absolutely crucial to building something useful. An accountable NHS is one where we can all understand how it is doing- and for this you need to listen to patients and families.”

Spiegelhalter and Pagel are calling for other researchers, companies and government to make health statistics accessible to patients and families by making them understandable. Transparency without accessibility is not enough; improved understanding by decision makers, health care professionals, patients and families can prevent misuse, confusion and unfounded anxiety.

Transparency without accessibility is not enough: stats must be put in context, say researchers.

Rather than try and directly compare hospitals with each other, we need to compare a hospital’s survival rate with what we would predict it to be, taking into account how severe their cases are.

David Spiegelhalter

CC0 Public Domain

Surgeon

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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How does your baby grow?

amb206 — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 13:26:28 +0000

Ten years ago Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Department of Paediatrics launched a major research project to study the effects of the environment on the developing foetus and young infant. ̽��ֱ��Cambridge Baby Growth Study (CBGS) recruited 2,400 pregnant mothers to take part in the research. ̽��ֱ��study represents the most in-depth study of its kind world-wide in terms of the detail it captured.

̽��ֱ��data gathered by CBGS is providing a whole community of scientists – right from physiologists to psychologists – with a rich resource for understanding more about child development and how it is affected by the environment. Researchers in Cambridge and elsewhere are using the CBGS data to produce important findings in areas such as the foetal origins of adult disease, notably diabetes, and the onset of conditions that include obesity.

In the course of the research, scientists collected biological samples from the mother and child. These included maternal blood during pregnancy, paternal DNA, cord blood, placentas, breast milk and infant serum as well as infant blood taken at intervals up to the age of two. New technologies were developed to measure hormones and chemicals in tiny spots of blood taken using the heel prick technique to minimise invasiveness.

Participants brought their babies into the research clinic at the age of 12 months and 24 months. Before these visits food diaries were sent out for completion. These diaries were coded at the MRC’s Human Nutrition Research Centre using its in-house database system. ̽��ֱ��database contains nutritional information on many thousands of different food and drinks. Macro-nutrients such as fat, protein and carbohydrates, and micro-nutrients such as vitamins and minerals were analysed. Mothers kept detailed diaries which covered meals, home-made recipes and preparation methods as well as how much their child ate; this information is enabling researchers to understand more about the complex nutritional factors which may be influencing how babies grow and develop.

CBGS began as part of a European Union research project involving centres in six European countries. Its initial remit was to focus on the study of environmental chemicals, known as endocrine disrupters, on male reproductive health, which has become a major concern in recent years. Participants were recruited at the first pre-natal hospital visit. At this point the sex of the foetus was unknown. Rather than drop around half of the recruits when it became clear which were boys and which girls, CBGS decided to retain all the children.

“To lose about 50 per cent of our recruits would have been a huge wasted opportunity. So we decided to retain the girls as well as the boys and use the data to build a resource that could tell us a tremendous amount about early years’ development and its implications for health – and about the role of nutrition in particular,” said Professor Ieuan Hughes, Head of Paediatrics at Cambridge.

CBGS has already enabled scientists to learn more about the complex and often inter-related factors that might contribute to the development of male reproductive health problems and a number of life-threatening diseases.

Data gathered from the male infants studied points to a doubling of the incidence of undescended testes since the 1960s, with around six per cent of boys at birth experiencing this problem today. ̽��ֱ��anogenital distance (distance between the anus and the genitalia) has been defined as a marker of androgen (steroid hormone) exposure. A clinical study is underway to analyse the anogenital distance in 100 infants having surgery. Cases of undescended testes are also being analysed in relation to CBGS drawn from biological samples and lifestyle information.

̽��ֱ��study has also shown that infants formula-fed at three months have higher insulin-like growth factor levels and greater gains in weight, length, fat levels and body mass index than those who were breast-fed. Preliminary data suggests that energy intake at 12 months predicts gains in body weight and fat at 24 months. Further investigations are planned to take these findings further. A Baby Milk Feeding Programme – offering advice to mothers using formula – is being piloted.

As a spin-out from CBGS, paediatricians Dr Ken Ong (Cambridge MRC Epidemiology Unit) and Dr Carlo Acerini are recruiting infants at birth who are either born small or large. Many babies born large are infants of children whose mothers either have diabetes or have developed a diabetic tendency while pregnant. “Big babies who have been exposed to higher sugar levels than others in the womb seem to grow slowly initially but are more likely to be bigger children or adults. Babies born small often grow slowly but many tend to be shorter as children or adults,” said Dr Acerini.

“We will be looking at how environmental factors, hormones and inherited factors affect growth in these babies. If we can identify early markers, we can understand and predict later growth patterns. This will help us to find out which babies are at the higher risk.”

̽��ֱ��CGBS data is also being used to promote understanding of topics such as gender identity and autism. “Working with our colleagues in fields such as psychology and psychiatry – both at Cambridge and beyond - is an important aspect of the study as it allows us to build up as full a picture as possible of human development,” said Professor Hughes.

One of the strengths of CBGS is the way in which both researchers and research nurses have worked with parents and children to foster a research community linked by a newsletter. At a party held earlier this year to mark the tenth anniversary of the study, parents had the chance to hear first-hand from experts in areas such as glucose levels and infant growth.

A substantial part of the data was gathered by a team of five research nurses whose role was vital. ̽��ֱ��expertise of these nurses is recognised by the Food Standards Agency which uses the information they gather to get accurate data on what we eat as a population and to inform government policy. For the last three years of the study funding for the nurses came from the Mothercare Group Foundation.

“We need to retain the valuable and irreplaceable resources represented by our research nurses. ̽��ֱ��generosity of the Mothercare Group Foundation has allowed us to reach this point and we are determined to realise the fruits of such investment by taking the original study forward to cover the teenage years,” said Professor Hughes.

̽��ֱ��parents involved in CBGS saw their involvement in pioneering research as a chance to “give something back” to society and regarded the tracking of their children’s growth by professionals as an added benefit. Many parents said that taking part had been a fascinating experience and many have expressed a desire to continue with the study as their children grew up.

With so many parents willing for their children to be tracked through puberty, Professor Hughes is keen that the substantial foundation of data should be followed up with a second phase of the study.

“ ̽��ֱ��children we recruited in the first year of the study are now reaching ten and those we recruited most recently are now two years old. With our oldest children now approaching puberty, we have a unique chance to bring them back into the study in order to gather data that will enable us to address key questions about puberty – such as the onset of adult diseases and conditions,” he said.

Along with a number of centres in Europe, Professor Hughes and colleagues are currently making an application for EU funding for a large study of what has been described as the “exposome” - embracing everything that a human could be exposed to that influences health and well-being. It would include chemicals, food and genes among other factors. CBGS represents a well-documented population.

A follow-up study would enable researchers to look at the relationship between data gathered from the infants studied in the first phase (prenatal to two years old) and data gathered before and during puberty. An understanding of obesity and its prevention is one area where the study could make a valuable contribution by exploring how growth and development in early life might be related to later problems.

“Our investment in CBGS means that we are in a position to discover how we can reduce the health risks contained in our ever changing environment. Notably we will be able to learn how best to prevent the childhood obesity epidemic which is no longer just a scare mongering exercise: it’s a reality,” said Professor Hughes.

A study of infant growth, tracking 2,400 babies from gestation to the age of two, has provided data of unique depth – and is already adding to our understanding of the development of life-threatening conditions, including obesity. ̽��ֱ��Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� scientists who led the research now plan to follow the same children through another key phase of development - puberty.

Working with our colleagues in fields such as psychology and psychiatry allows us to build up as full a picture as possible of human development.

Professor Ieuan Hughes

Suzanne Smith

Weighing in for the Cambridge Baby Growth Study

Case studies

CASE STUDY 1 Lynne says: “My two daughters, who are now aged two and four, were part of the CBGS, the first child from 2007 to 2009 and the second from 2009 to 2011. I was approached to take part in the research while attending the antenatal clinic at 12 weeks’ pregnancy. I completed a detailed lifestyle questionnaire during my pregnancy and again three months after birth: this covered general health and also products used at home such as food and toiletries. I was given a detailed glucose tolerance test which gave more information than the standard prenatal test and provided some additional blood samples throughout the pregnancy. ̽��ֱ��girls' father also provided DNA samples. At birth, small samples of cord blood and placenta were taken; a sample of breast milk was also collected over the first three months. At intervals across two years, research nurses measured the girls’ growth, took abdominal ultrasounds to measure their fat and blood samples to analyse hormone levels. I kept food diaries recording details of each child’s diet at both one and two years of age. I’m keen to see the study continue so that my daughters, and others, can be followed through puberty. ̽��ֱ��girls will be able to make up their own minds whether they want to take part. I’ve kept all the newsletters so they will be able to read about the study so far. I hope they will agree to contribute to the continuation of this exciting research.”

CASE STUDY 2 Sarah says: “My son and daughter, who are now five and three, took part in the Baby Growth Study from 2006 to 2010. I was delighted to help with the research to further what we know about children’s growth and development and the factors which play a role in the health of a child. After a while we became well acquainted with the researchers and attending sessions was like catching up with old friends and it was interesting to hear about the latest developments in the project. It was great to attend the Baby Growth Study celebration party in May 2011, to meet other parents and children who were involved in the research and to hear about some of the results so far. During the study I was made more aware of potential factors which might affect children’s growth and development, such as exposure to cleaning products, hair dyes and paints. I avoided decorating my house during my pregnancies and while I was breast feeding, as a result of completing the environmental factors questionnaire! Keeping the food diaries made me think more carefully about my children’s diet. I am a GP and results of studies such as this will aid me, and fellow healthcare professionals, when advising patients in the future and will help us promote the healthiest lifestyle possible to ensure the next generation is as healthy as possible.

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