Generation, reproduction and birth outcome

Causes for disease late in life can be found in events around birth, but also in events before the birth itself. A huge interest in the determinants of birthweight has recently re-emerged due to consistent results showing increased risk of poor health out comes for individuals born with low birth weight. The idea is that these early events are linked to fetal programming of adult disease. This idea of early origin will be challenged on variation in reproduction and birth outcome between generations. If co nditions at birth in the 1st generation (the birth of the mother or father) influence essential factors in life, such as taking up smoking at an early age, reducing the chance of finding a partner, the ‘early origin’ hypothesis is primarily linked to thes e events, since these are linked to occurrence of adult diseases. We have in Norway a unique source to reproductive epidemiologic research, since the Medical Birth Registry (MBR) holds the power to study family related data on a population level, and wi th 37 years of data we can now study reproduction through generations. We will use MBR data for 1967-2003 (2.2 million births), linked (through Statistics Norway) for data on education, causes of death, and marital status. Approximately 440.000 mother-ch ild units and 280.000 father-child units will be available. The ongoing project the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) now holds 40.000 mothers, and these will add to this unique potential, since those data will provide a vast of relevant expo sure-information (for instance previous pregnancies, incl. abortions, smoking habits and nutrition) and since ninety per cent of the mothers are born in 1967 or later. These family-linked data are unique worldwide. There is no other population source of reproductive data of this dimension and quality. We have previously shown that we are able to present our research in high impact journals like NEnglJM, JAMA and BMJ. Recently classified as 'Excellent' in NFR eva