Features / Children of the 90s
From birth to breakthrough – the Children of the 90s
Snuggled in the corner of the University of Bristol’s Oakfield House is the head office for one of the city’s most unique academic studies – the Children of the 90s.
The research, which explores all aspects of health and wellbeing of people born in 1991 and 1992, first began when these now 32 and 33-year-olds were in the womb.
As Professor Jean Golding, the project’s originator, explained: “I started planning the Children of the 90s in 1985 and we started collecting data in 1990.
is needed now More than ever
“I had been working with large cohort studies that had been following people, particularly children. And I realised how much was missing from what was being collected.”
Professors Jean Golding and Nic Thompson are the key people behind the study
She continued: “So, I designed a study that collected a lot more detail, in particular biological samples – like blood, saliva, urine.”
The study initially involved a participant group of 14,000 pregnant mothers, then evolved to include their children born in 91 and 92, and the children of their children.
Golding and her team reached out to people through ITV – then known as HTV West – and BBC West. She explained:
“We got it out there, also with the local newspapers. People gradually learned about it, we kept promoting it and people were allowed to refer themselves. We had a big organisation which consisted of volunteers whom we started sending information to. We started sending (participants) questionnaires and eventually seeing them in our clinic.”
The children of the ‘Children of the 90s’ are now an integral part of the study
In 2021, to coincide with some of the children’s 30th birthdays, a clinic was set up by the new head of the study – Nic Timpson, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology. This purpose-built facility has enabled the Children of the 90s team to undertake considerably more research and regularly interact with study participants on a face-to-face basis. A range of body functions are tested at the clinic including cardiovascular fitness, physical function, lung function, blood pressure and liver function. Later this year, the clinic will move to the Learning & Research building at Southmead Hospital.
How have researchers encouraged the ‘children’ to keep engaging with the study?
Timpson credits it all to the original framework: “To give you some scale, we see now with contemporary studies that if you go into the street and just ask a lot of people to be involved in a study…somewhere between five and ten per cent of people will say yes,” he said.
“This study, because of the way it was recruited… still has 50 per cent (of the original participants) left.”
The founder of the study – Professor Jean Golding – with the participants of the study
Although life has got in the way for some, and others have now moved away from Bristol, Timpson finds it “extraordinary” that three decades since it started, half of the original children are still part of the study – “and actually there are more, as partners have become involved and new babies have arrived,” he added.
The study has made many significant discoveries over the years, most notably a finding in 2003 that peanut oil in skin cream may be connected to children developing peanut allergies.
Talking about the future for the study, Golding – who turns 85 this month – says the hope is that researchers will continue following the original children and their blood relatives for as long as possible.
“There’s lots of research out there and lots of studies that try to mine bits of life,” said Timpson. “So somebody might do a fertility study and just work on people who are trying to conceive, or you might do a study of heart disease.
“Something like Children of the 90s has the opportunity to provide continuity across all those stories.”
All photos: Children of the 90s
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