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ORIGINS is Australia's largest longitudinal cohort study of its kind. Following 10,000 WA children from their time in the womb into early childhood, ORIGINS researchers are working to better understand when and why non-communicable diseases develop, and provide solutions for early intervention to ensure every child and family flourishes throughout their lifetime.
Honorary Research Fellow
Food allergy affects families' quality of life, can be lifelong and life-threatening, urging the identification of early modifiable risk factors. Formula feeding in the first days of life may increase the risk of cow's milk allergy, a risk often attributed to cow's milk allergens exposure. Early formula feeding also reduces the colostrum intake, the first 3 days' milk, which is rich in bioactive compounds critical for immune and gut health. This study investigates whether partial colostrum feeding increases the risk of food allergy beyond cow's milk.
Desiree Silva MBBS, FRACP, MPH, PhD Co-Director, ORIGINS desiree.silva@thekids.org.au Co-Head, The ORIGINS Project Professor Desiree Silva is
Urine is an attractive biospecimen for nutritional status and population health surveys. It is an excellent non-invasive alternative to blood for appropriate biomarkers in young children and is suitable for home-based collection, enabling representative collections across a population. However, the bulk of literature in this population is restricted to collection in primary care settings.
To describe the infant and maternal characteristics of the Early Moves cohort and to assess representativeness to the general population, and to evaluate the implementation fidelity of an application-based collection of General Movement Assessment (GMA) videos at writhing and fidgety age.
While international evidence suggests seasonal variations may influence outcomes of interventions for pediatric obesity, data for Aotearoa New Zealand are limited. We examined seasonal variations in changes in body mass index standard deviation score (BMI SDS) in young people with obesity enrolled in an intervention programme.
This longitudinal analysis in Australian women evaluated change in diet quality and food and nutrient intakes from the third trimester of pregnancy to 1-year postpartum with comparison to national nutrition recommendations. Associations between diet quality, sociodemographic and health characteristics were also investigated.
Children with wheeze and asthma present with airway epithelial vulnerabilities, such as impaired responses to viral infection. It is postulated that the in utero environment may contribute to the development of airway epithelial vulnerabilities.
Early infancy is a critical period for immune development. In addition to being the primary food source during early infancy, human milk also provides multiple bioactive components that shape the infant gut microbiome and immune system and provides a constant source of exposure to maternal microbiota. Given the potential interplay between allergic diseases and the human microbiome, this study aimed to characterise the milk microbiome of allergic mothers.