The EarlyBird Diabetes Study
The study is a 12-year prospective analysis of body composition, physical activity and metabolic health of a single cohort of children, randomly recruited from Plymouth primary schools in 2000-2001 at age 5yr. Insulin resistance, related largely to obesity, is believed to underlie diabetes and heart disease, and EarlyBird aims to establish why some children, and not others, develop insulin resistance. Now in its 10th year, EarlyBird is able to exploit its longitudinal design to detect previously unrecognised trends and interactions, some of them counterintuitive. It appears that the trajectory which leads to obesity is established early in life, and involves principally offspring whose same sex-parent is obese. Inactivity does not appear to be the cause of obesity, rather obesity the cause of inactivity. Modelling of the longitudinal data should allow us to determine - crucially - to what extent insulin resistance and diabetes risk are directly attributable to obesity, or to the reduction in physical activity that results from obesity. EarlyBird is incorporated within the Department of Endocrinology & Metabolism, Derriford Hospital.
For more information on this research group please visit the websiteView Website