The Importance of Childhood for Adult Health and Development—Study Protocol of the Zurich Longitudinal Studies

Abstract

Evidence is accumulating that individual and environmental factors in childhood and adolescence should be considered when investigating adult health and aging-related processes. The data required for this is gathered by comprehensive long-term longitudinal studies. This article describes the protocol of the Zurich Longitudinal Studies (ZLS), a set of three comprehensive cohort studies on child growth, health, and development that are currently expanding into adulthood. Between 1954 and 1961, 445 healthy infants were enrolled in the first ZLS cohort. Their physical, motor, cognitive, and social development and their environment were assessed comprehensively across childhood, adolescence, and into young adulthood. In the 1970s, two further cohorts were added to the ZLS and assessed with largely matched study protocols: Between 1974 and 1979, the second ZLS cohort included 265 infants (103 term-born and 162 preterm infants), and between 1970 and 2002, the third ZLS cohort included 327 children of participants of the first ZLS cohort. Since 2019, the participants of the three ZLS cohorts have been traced and invited to participate in a first wave of assessments in adulthood to investigate their current health and development. This article describes the ZLS study protocol and discusses opportunities, methodological and conceptual challenges, and limitations arising from a long-term longitudinal cohort recruited from a study about development in early life. In the future, the ZLS will provide data to investigate childhood antecedents of adult health outcomes and, ultimately, will help respond to the frequent call of scientists to shift the focus of aging research into the first decades of life and, thus, to take a lifespan perspective on aging.

What is the adult experience of Perthes’ disease?

“…Acquiring a large amount of long-term follow-up data for a uncommon condition is challenging in a hospital setting, as children typically transition to adult care, making outcomes research unattainable. 28 , 29 The longitudinal data we have for Perthes’ disease patients is limited regarding patient-reported outcomes. In this section, we discuss the response to our research questions: what is the feasibility of obtaining survey data from adults who had Perthes’ disease as children using a web-based platform?…”

Secular trends in motor performance in Swiss children and adolescents from 1983 to 2018

“…SES data were collected through parental questionnaires with scores calculated by converting parental occupation and maternal education to a 6-point scale ( 51 – 53 ).…”

“…The Zurich Longitudinal Studies (ZLS) are a set of three Swiss longitudinal cohort studies (ZLS-1, ZLS-2 and ZLS-3) on children's growth, health, and development [see (51)]. In the 1970s, the study investigators added the Zurich Neuromotor Assessment (ZNA) (52)(53)(54) to the study's assessment procedure in order to investigate motor performance.…”

Meilen- und Grenzsteine der Entwicklung

“…A: Finanzielle Interessen: Der Schweizerische Nationalfonds hat im Rahmen von Forschungsförderung die Zürcher Longitudinalstudien (ZLS) über die letzten 30 Jahre mit mehreren Millionen Schweizer Franken unterstützt (u. a. auch den Autor). Viele der in diesem Beitrag beschriebenen Meilen-und Grenzsteine wurden aus den ZLS extrahiert [18]. Die Abbildungen im vorliegenden Beitrag stammen aus dem Fachbuch des Autors "Die kindliche Entwicklung verstehen" [5]…”