The Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) birth cohort study recruited 3624 pregnant women, most partners and 3542 eligible offspring. We hypothesise that early life physical and psychosocial environments, immunological, physiological, nutritional, hormonal and metabolic influences interact with genetics influencing allergic diseases, including asthma. Environmental and biological sampling, innate and adaptive immune responses, gene expression, DNA methylation, gut microbiome and nutrition studies complement repeated environmental and clinical assessments to age 5. This rich data set, linking prenatal and postnatal environments, diverse biological samples and rigorous phenotyping, will inform early developmental pathways to allergy, asthma and other chronic inflammatory diseases.
Keywords: Allergic lung disease; Asthma; Asthma Epidemiology; Asthma Genetics; Asthma Mechanisms; Paediatric asthma; Respiratory Measurement; Viral infection.
Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.