论文部分内容阅读
Excess exposure to glucocorticoids during fetal life could program both short-term or long-term biological changes at cellular, tissue, organ, or body system level in adult life, and these mechanisms may partly explain the modem epidemics of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, or asthma.There has been an increasing body of supporting evidence from experimental studies, but how these findings could to be translated to human evidence is unclear.There have been challenges to design a large human study with a good maker of early life exposure and long-term outcome data after decades of observational time.Based on preliminary findings, the current study uses data from 21 national databases in Denmark, Sweden, and Finland to establish a population-based cohort of 6.7 million children.Its objective is to examine the programming effects of an early stress exposure, as the indicator of excess glucocorticoid exposure, on a wide range of disease outcomes, medication, and health service use after up to 35 years of follow up.The second biological component is a proof of concept for glucocorticoid programming, examining biomarkers along the pathway from prenatal stress to disease susceptibility for asthma and diabetes.The study is so far the largest epidemiological study in history, which can meet the challenges in 4 research areas: foetal/glucocorticoid programming, stress, bereavement, and national register-based research.The combined multi-national data in demographic, social, and health information permits potential collaborations from worldwide to generate new scientific insights, hypotheses, and theories.