Wehrle Flavia M, Caflisch Jon, Eichelberger Dominique A, Haller Giulia, Latal Beatrice, Largo Remo H, Kakebeeke Tanja H, Jenni Oskar G
Child Development Center, University Children's Hospital Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Children's Research Center, University Children's Hospital Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2021 Jan 28;14:612453. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2020.612453. eCollection 2020.
Evidence is accumulating that individual and environmental factors in childhood and adolescence should be considered when investigating adult health and aging-related processes. The data required for this is gathered by comprehensive long-term longitudinal studies. This article describes the protocol of the Zurich Longitudinal Studies (ZLS), a set of three comprehensive cohort studies on child growth, health, and development that are currently expanding into adulthood. Between 1954 and 1961, 445 healthy infants were enrolled in the first ZLS cohort. Their physical, motor, cognitive, and social development and their environment were assessed comprehensively across childhood, adolescence, and into young adulthood. In the 1970s, two further cohorts were added to the ZLS and assessed with largely matched study protocols: Between 1974 and 1979, the second ZLS cohort included 265 infants (103 term-born and 162 preterm infants), and between 1970 and 2002, the third ZLS cohort included 327 children of participants of the first ZLS cohort. Since 2019, the participants of the three ZLS cohorts have been traced and invited to participate in a first wave of assessments in adulthood to investigate their current health and development. This article describes the ZLS study protocol and discusses opportunities, methodological and conceptual challenges, and limitations arising from a long-term longitudinal cohort recruited from a study about development in early life. In the future, the ZLS will provide data to investigate childhood antecedents of adult health outcomes and, ultimately, will help respond to the frequent call of scientists to shift the focus of aging research into the first decades of life and, thus, to take a lifespan perspective on aging.
越来越多的证据表明，在研究成人健康和与衰老相关的过程时，应考虑儿童和青少年时期的个体及环境因素。为此所需的数据通过全面的长期纵向研究收集。本文描述了苏黎世纵向研究（ZLS）的方案，这是一组关于儿童生长、健康和发育的三项综合队列研究，目前已扩展到成年期。1954年至1961年间，445名健康婴儿被纳入第一个ZLS队列。在整个童年、青少年期直至青年期，对他们的身体、运动、认知和社会发展及其环境进行了全面评估。20世纪70年代，又有两个队列被添加到ZLS中，并采用了基本匹配的研究方案进行评估：1974年至1979年间，第二个ZLS队列包括265名婴儿（103名足月儿和162名早产儿），1970年至2002年间，第三个ZLS队列包括第一个ZLS队列参与者的327名子女。自2019年以来，对三个ZLS队列的参与者进行了追踪，并邀请他们参加成年期的第一波评估，以调查他们目前的健康和发育状况。本文描述了ZLS研究方案，并讨论了机会、方法和概念上的挑战，以及从一项关于生命早期发育的研究中招募的长期纵向队列所产生的局限性。未来，ZLS将提供数据来调查成人健康结果的童年前因，并最终有助于回应科学家们经常提出的呼吁，即将衰老研究的重点转移到生命的前几十年，从而从寿命的角度看待衰老。
