SLU Gets $26 Million to Study Children’s Health

By Tina Hesman Saey, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Oct. 4–The largest ever study of human health and the environment will include thousands of children from St. Louis City and Macoupin County, Ill.

The study, the National Children’s Study, will follow 100,000 children from conception to age 21. It is designed to explore how genetics, environmental and social factors interact to shape child development and influence adult health.

The study could shed light on factors that lead to premature birth, birth defects and diseases such as asthma, autism, diabetes, heart disease and others. Data from the study is expected to help federal regulators set limits on exposure to chemicals, decide which products and drugs to approve, and make recommendations about exposure to television and other media and even advise parents on social and behavioral factors that could harm or improve their children’s health.

St. Louis University will head one of 22 new National Children’s Study centers announced today by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

SLU won a contract for $26 million over five years. The university’s School of Public Health and School of Medicine will collaborate with researchers at Washington University School of Medicine, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville School of Nursing and the St. Louis Battelle Memorial Institute.

The researchers plan to recruit 250 pregnant women and women hoping to conceive each year in each of the counties for four years. The researchers will sample air, water and soil samples from study participants’ homes and take biological samples, including hair, blood, umbilical cord blood, placenta and fingernails from the women and their children to determine what chemicals children are exposed to throughout life. That data will be analyzed along with genetic data.

A unique component of the study will include social analysis, including how parents discipline their children, how much TV kids watch and which computer games they play, whether grandparents are involved in their upbringing, and how religion and other cultural factors may influence health.

Recruitment for the study here is expected to begin in 2009.

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