The Paris prospective birth cohort study: Which design and who participates?

Abstract

The Paris prospective birth cohort study was implemented in 2003 to assess environmental/behavioural factors associated with respiratory and allergic disorder occurrence in early childhood. This paper describes the design and sociodemographic features of eligible/enrolled families. Full-term newborns without any medical problem at birth were recruited in five Paris maternity hospitals. They resided in the Paris area and had French speaking mothers. Sample size is at least 3500 infants, and children are followed-up until their sixth birthday. Data collection is based on regular medical and environmental self-administered questionnaires to parents. Information on dwellings is gathered by means of phone questionnaires, and standardized medical examinations are carried out at 18 months and 6 years. Exposure to traffic-related pollution is modelled. At inclusion, some information concerning refusals is gathered in order to describe sociodemographic features of participating families as compared with eligible children. 4115 (63%) out of the 6493 eligible infants are now participating in this study. Participation rate is higher in parents with a high SES (socioeconomic status), for French and European parents, and for > or =25-year-old mothers, but decreases with sibship size. Similar determinants are associated with the distribution of reasons for non-participation. The participation rate in the Paris study is comparable with other similar studies. Finally, giving detailed explanation of the study aims at inclusion, establishing regular mailed and phoned contacts with families, offering free complete medical examinations for the participant child and re-sent missing questionnaires are very important to improve participation at inclusion and during follow-up.

Forced expiratory flows’ contribution to lung function interpretation in schoolchildren

“…The healthy children we studied were taking part in a birth-cohort survey aimed at describing early respiratory and allergic symptoms and their relationship to environmental exposure [19]. Thanks to the close follow-up of the children we are confident that we did not include asthmatic children in the control group, however we did not exclude children with environmental tobacco exposure, nor did we exclude children with one or two moderate wheezing episodes before three years of age.…”

“…Children were recruited for this study from a general population-based cohort of healthy full-term newborns (Paris cohort, control group) [19] or were visiting for routine follow-up of asthma disease diagnosed according to international recommendations [2]. Children enrolled in the Paris cohort underwent lung function testing and blood sampling as part of the visit at 7 years of age, and we excluded children who had respiratory symptoms compatible with asthma [2] by using a standardised questionnaire and clinical examination.…”

The Generation R Study: design and cohort update 2012

“…New methods for contacting participants, which have been used in other more recently started studies, including use of internet, sms and e-mail, are currently being explored [92, [252][253][254][255][256][257][258][259][260][261][262].…”

Fetal nutritional origins of adult diseases: challenges for epidemiological research

“…Both large-scale and more in depth epidemiological studies are needed, of which several have been described in detail in this journal [62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69]. Major efforts should be made to analyze the effects of maternal macronutrient and micronutrient intake on epigenetic modifications of specific genes related to cardiovascular development and on detailed fetal adaptive responses in early and late pregnancy.…”