Pearson Colleen, Bartell Tami, Wang Guoying, Hong Xiumei, Rusk Serena A, Fu LingLing, Cerda Sandra, Bustamante-Helfrich Blandine, Kuohung Wendy, Yarrington Christina, Adams William G, Wang Xiaobin
Department of Pediatrics, Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA.
Patrick M. Magoon Institute for Healthy Communities, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
Precis Nutr. 2022 Aug 18;1(2):e00011. doi: 10.1097/PN9.0000000000000011. eCollection 2022 Sep.
In1998, the Boston Birth Cohort (BBC) was initiated at Boston Medical Center (BMC) in response to persistently high rates of preterm birth (PTB, defined as birth before 37 weeks of gestation) in the US population and the longstanding profound PTB disparity among Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). The BBC encompasses two linked study protocols: The PTB Study serves as the baseline recruitment in the BBC. It aims to address fundamental questions about the causes and consequences of PTB. The study oversamples preterm babies using a case/control study design, in which cases are defined as mothers who deliver a preterm and/or low birthweight baby (<2500 grams regardless of gestational age). Controls are enrolled at a 2:1 control/case ratio and matched by maternal age (±5 years), self-reported race and ethnicity, and date of delivery (± 7 days for case delivery). From inception, it was designed as a comprehensive gene-environmental study of PTB. As a natural extension, the Children's Health Study, under a separate but linked Institutional Review Board protocol, is a longitudinal follow-up study of the participants who were recruited at birth in the PTB Study and who continue pediatric care at BMC. This linked model allows for investigation of early life origins of pediatric and chronic disease in a prospective cohort design. The BBC is one of the largest and longest National Institutes of Health-funded prospective birth cohort studies in the United States, consisting of 8733 mother-child dyads enrolled in the PTB Study at birth, and of those, 3592 children have been enrolled in the Children's Health Study, with a median follow-up of 14.5 years. The BBC mirrors the urban, underresourced, and underrepresented BIPOC population served by BMC. A high proportion of BBC children were born prematurely and had chronic health conditions (e.g., asthma, obesity, and elevated blood pressure) in childhood. The BBC's long-term goal has been to build a large, comprehensive database (epidemiological, clinical, and multiomics) and biospecimen repository to elucidate early life origins of pediatric and chronic diseases and identify modifiable upstream factors (e.g., psychosocial, environmental, and nutritional) to improve health across the life course for BIPOC mothers and children.
1998年，波士顿出生队列（BBC）在波士顿医疗中心（BMC）启动，以应对美国人群中持续居高不下的早产率（PTB，定义为妊娠37周前出生）以及黑人和有色人种（BIPOC）中长期存在的巨大早产差异。BBC包含两个相互关联的研究方案：早产研究是BBC的基线招募项目。其旨在解决有关早产的原因和后果的基本问题。该研究采用病例对照研究设计对早产婴儿进行过度抽样，其中病例定义为分娩早产和/或低体重婴儿（无论孕周如何，体重<2500克）的母亲。对照以2:1的对照/病例比例入选，并按母亲年龄（±5岁）、自我报告的种族和族裔以及分娩日期（病例分娩日期±7天）进行匹配。从一开始，它就被设计为一项关于早产的全面基因环境研究。作为自然延伸，儿童健康研究在一个单独但相互关联的机构审查委员会方案下，是对在早产研究中出生时招募并在BMC继续接受儿科护理的参与者进行的纵向随访研究。这种关联模型允许以前瞻性队列设计调查儿童和慢性疾病的早期生命起源。BBC是美国国立卫生研究院资助的最大且历时最长的前瞻性出生队列研究之一，由8733对母婴二元组在出生时参与早产研究，其中3592名儿童参与了儿童健康研究，中位随访时间为14.5年。BBC反映了BMC所服务的城市、资源不足且代表性不足的BIPOC人群。BBC中有很大比例的儿童早产，童年时期患有慢性健康问题（如哮喘、肥胖和高血压）。BBC的长期目标一直是建立一个大型综合数据库（流行病学、临床和多组学）和生物样本库，以阐明儿童和慢性疾病的早期生命起源，并确定可改变的上游因素（如心理社会、环境和营养因素），以改善BIPOC母亲和儿童一生的健康状况。
