$3.2 Billion Child Health Study To Begin In January
Posted on: Friday, 3 October 2008, 15:30 CDT
Officials from the U.S. National Institutes of Health announced on Friday that their study to determine the health of 100,000 U.S. children from before birth to age 21 is slated to begin in January 2009.
The National Children’s Study will cost $3.2 billion and is intended to find factors leading to autism, cerebral palsy learning disabilities, birth defects, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, diabetes, asthma, heart disease, obesity and other conditions.
The comprehensive study will examine hereditary and environmental factors such as exposure to certain chemicals that affect health.
Study centers will recruit from study locations -- counties and other geographic demarcations preselected by study scientists to be representative of the United States.
Today, NIH officials named the 27 study centers that will be funded in 2008, which will manage 39 locations. That brings the total of new and existing study centers to 36, covering a total of 72 study locations.
The study is expected to eventually have 40 study centers recruiting volunteers from the planned 105 study locations throughout the United States.
"The advantage of a long term study of development is that it will yield important health information at virtually every phase of the life cycle," said Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., director of the National Institutes of Health.
The study centers will recruit participants, collect genetic, biological, and environmental samples, and compile statistical information for study analyses on the relationships between health, genetics, and the environment.
"Eventually, it will provide greater understanding of adult disorders. In the immediate future, however, we expect it to provide insight into the disorders of birth and infancy."
Officials said more than $200 million has already been spent on the project.
"We anticipate that in the long term, what we learn from the study will result in a significant savings in the nation's health care costs," said Dr. Duane Alexander, who heads the NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
The study will begin in January when the University of North Carolina and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York start signing up pregnant women whose babies would then be followed to age 21.
The first data from the study, including factors behind pre-term birth, could be available in 2012 or 2013.
"With more than 100,000 participants, we believe the National Children's Study will be the largest study of pregnant women ever conducted in the United States," said National Children's Study Director Peter Scheidt, M.D., M.P.H. "We expect the study to yield information on a variety of pregnancy and birth-associated conditions."
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Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports
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User Comments (1)
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Posted by Mike on 10/03/2008, 19:15 Interesting! |
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