Southampton mothers in new research into healthy bones
Exciting new research to be carried out in Southampton involving hundreds of local mums should shed more light on the relationship between a mother’s diet during pregnancy, and her child’s bone health in later years.
Dr Zoë Cole, a specialist registrar in rheumatology at Southampton General Hospital, has been awarded a three-year £164,135 clinical research fellowship from the Arthritis Research Campaign to carry out the research, and specifically to find out how two factors – poor growth of the foetus in the womb and diet and exercise during a child’s early life – interact.
The amount of bone grown during childhood and adolescence is an important contributor to keeping bones strong and warding off the brittle bone disease of osteoporosis. But while eating healthily and being active during toddling years is essential, keeping bones healthy starts even earlier – in the womb.
“I will be trying to find out as much as I can about the crucial time of bone development, and how this relates to later life disease,” explained Dr Cole. “How much is due to what happens in utero – in the womb – and how much is due to diet and activity levels?”
Up to 400 mothers and their seven-year-olds from the Southampton Women’s Survey will be asked to take part in Dr Cole’s study. More than 12,500 women have been enrolled on the survey since 1998, contributing to new research knowledge about the effects of diets and lifestyles on people’s health and well-being and in conditions as diverse as lung function, allergies, pre-menstrual syndrome and depression, as well as osteoporosis. Vitamin D has been found to play a major role in early bone development.
The women were recruited before they became mothers, and followed through pregnancy. One of the additional studies attached to the main survey is now charting the progress of their children’s bones from birth to the age of seven.
As part of the osteoporosis study, women before they became pregnant have provided information about their food intake, activity levels, had their height weight measured, blood tests and scans taken of the thickness and strength of their bones, and asked about their education social class, whether or not they smoked. During pregnancy they had further interviews and scans.
Within a few weeks of birth their babies had a bone density scan to measure their bones, to provide an idea of how the babies’ skeleton grew during pregnancy. This was compared with the lifestyle information from the parents to identify key factors that could affect babies’ bone growth before birth.
Dr Cole is now inviting up to 400 mothers back to the clinic with their children, now aged seven. The women will fill in daily food diaries on behalf of their offspring. Both mothers and their children will have an activity monitor to measure their heart rate and muscle contractions to measure how active they are in a week. The youngsters will also have full body DXA scan and a CT scan of either the leg or arm to measure the health and strength of their bones.
“It’s an acknowledged problem that there is a concern that only mothers who are interested in nutrition and healthy lifestyles will come along, so it won’t be representative, but we think the women on the survey are pretty representative of Southampton, and that Southampton is quite representative of the country,” says Dr Cole.
“It can be very difficult for mums to correctly estimate how much activity her children do. That’s where the heart monitor comes in; so we can find out exactly how fit these kids are.”
Dr Cole hopes that her research and that of others will lead to some very specific guidelines and advice on healthy eating and exercise – for both pregnant women and their future offspring.
