Causal pathways for asthma (CASPAR) – MoBa “a happy hunting ground”

Abstract

Large population-based research cohorts, together with national health registries and biobanks are core components in a modern infrastructure for knowledge. Along with the other Nordic countries, Norway has unique opportunities for high quality research based on cohorts, biobanks and registries. Cohorts, biobanks and registries provide a basis for discovering causes and mechanisms of disease as well as for following the development of disease, effects of treatment and consequences of disease. The purpose of this manuscript is to give a brief outline of a project that makes use of these unique opportunities by using data from The Norwegian Mother and Child cohort study (MoBa) to address research questions of common interest, and thus encourage other research groups to use this “happy hunting ground”.

The present study, Causal Pathways for Asthma (CASPAR) funded by the Research Council of Norway, is a subproject of MoBa. The project is designed to take advantage of the potential for research on human biological material in biobanks, by coupling analysis results with data from health surveys, health registries and the health services. The present study is based on an ongoing collaboration between the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH), the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in the US and several other national and international collaborators within The MoBa Asthma Group. The main aim of the study is to examine a number of hypothesis regarding in utero and early life exposures in relation to the development of different phenotypes of asthma and allergies in childhood.

For the majority of children who become asthmatic and allergic, the differentiation of their immune system into an atopic phenotype probably begins before birth and is established within the first six years of life. This study will advance knowledge of the mechanisms whereby diet and environmental exposures influences gene expression to alter risk of atopic disease. The prime purpose is to build up new knowledge on asthma pathogenesis. There is a great need to develop a new paradigm of disease pathogenesis that takes advantages of applied molecular approaches to asthma and atopic diseases as it occurs in humans at different stages of development. This project takes advantage not only of the basic MoBa samples and infrastructure including links to other national health registries, but also a new national supplementary study of MoBa that includes measures of prenatal exposures in maternal plasma believed to have epigenetic influences on asthma/atopy development and data on genome wide methylation of cord blood DNA.