U of T and Mount Sinai Hospital launch Canada’s largest women and babies study
Today, the University of Toronto’s Fraser Mustard Institute for Human Development and Mount Sinai Hospital launched the Ontario Birth Study. The largest Canadian study of its kind, it will follow thousands of women and their babies, helping scientists and health practitioners understand how genes and the environment interact to shape health.
"Everyone wants their children to grow up healthy, happy and do well in their lives,” says Professor Stephen Lye, Executive Director of the Fraser Mustard Institute for Human Development, which focuses on how critical the earliest days of life are to well-being across the lifespan.
“What we are exposed to in the womb, the nutrition of pregnant mothers, our experiences throughout infancy and early childhood, all interact with our genetic makeup and can impact our health throughout our lives,” continues Lye, a professor in the Departments of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and Physiology and scientist at Mount Sinai’s Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute.
Maternal nutrition during pregnancy, exposure to different stimuli in the womb and exercise in early childhood all have a major impact on disease susceptibility during pregnancy and can lead to health problems like obesity. By observing the health of pregnant women, tracking the progress of developing fetuses and monitoring early infancy into childhood, researchers hopes to discover how chronic diseases might be avoided.
Lye and Alan Bocking, Chair of U of T’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, are leading a team of more than 30 clinicians and researchers to transform the standard of care for women and their babies, leading to a more personalized approach to their care.
“We’re focusing on the long-term prevention of common, complex illnesses,” says Bocking, also a physician in Mount Sinai’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. “By fostering healthy early development, we have a better chance of preventing common adult diseases and promoting long-term health.”
The study is open to all pregnant patients at Mount Sinai Hospital and it is expected that over 1,200 women will be enrolled in the first year of this multi-year study. Patients will participate in regular lifestyle and diet questionnaires and provide biologic samples, such as blood tests during routine prenatal medical appointments. Data analysis will begin in the study’s second year. The Ontario Birth Study hopes to expand to other hospitals across the province in a few years.
The Ontario Birth Study has partnered with TARget Kids!, a large network of child health researchers and practitioners in the Greater Toronto Area who will help track the health of children enrolled in the study.
