A healthy start to life: Massive databanks key to unlocking novel insights
A Western Australian longitudinal birth cohort study published in the International Journal of Population Data Science (IJPDS), designed to understand the developmental origins of health and disease, has built a massive data and biobank to optimise a healthy start to life for young children.
Since commencing in 2017, ORIGINS’ data and biobank has accumulated more than 15 million data-points and more than 400,000 bio samples from around 8,000 families, including mothers, their partners and children. The data and samples, collected at regular intervals from pregnancy through early childhood, are helping to drive a range of early interventions aimed at reducing the rising epidemic of lifelong non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
Globally, NCDs – including obesity, allergies, chronic inflammation, gut issues and heart and lung disease – represent a substantial disease burden and lead to poor life quality and premature death, with heavy costs to governments and society. Many tend to share underlying causes, such as immune dysfunction, chronic low-grade inflammation, metabolic issues and alterations to the gut microbiome – suggesting similar causal pathways. Environmental context and parental health influences interactions between physical, immune, metabolic, emotional and behavioural development, which set a child’s lifelong health trajectory. These interactions shape health outcomes and disease susceptibility. The impact can be subtle, with some effects not evident until much later in life.The complexity of these interactions means typical, single-timepoint research studies are unlikely to be adequate to address the intertwining factors affecting a child’s long-term health.
ORIGINS takes an integrated systems approach that seeks to unlock these complex interactions between biological factors at the microscale – for example, genetic, metabolic and microbiomics factors – within a child’s broader physical and psychological environment. ORIGINS has developed a world-class platform collecting multiple measures and biosamples – including blood, urine, breast-milk, hair, and placentas – across a variety of health and wellness domains. As well as observing children over time, researchers can embed early interventions that minimise the onset of lifelong NCDs. The goal is to achieve short-term improvement across a range of health outcomes, while also building a long-term agenda of improved health and wellbeing for the next generations.
ORIGINS – which has attracted more than 700 scientific collaborators locally, nationally and internationally – has so far spawned more than 45 sub-projects and 16 intervention studies examining the interactions between biopsychosocial, immune, metabolic and epigenetic influences upon emotional, behavioural and physical development. The team expects the project’s data and biobank to attract AI and machine learning researchers who need access to large, comprehensive datasets to achieve novel insights that extend scientific understanding.
Research Fellow, Dr Belinda Davey said, “We hope that the rate of NCDs in ORIGINS children taking part in interventions will be lower, so their lifelong quality of life is improved. Governments need to invest in large data and biobanks like ORIGINS so researchers can embed interventions to track children and reduce the complex factors that lead to chronic disorders”.
As these participants move into childhood, mental health indicators can be collected to allow prospective tracking of various indicators and their relationship with later outcomes.
Finally, the ability to embed powerful research studies aims to develop the next generation of researchers within Western Australia and beyond.
The ORIGINS Project is a collaboration between The Kids Research Institute Australia and Joondalup Health Campus.
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Dr Belinda Davey, Research Officer, Human Factors in Data Science, Centre for Digital Transformation of Health, University of Melbourne, Australia
Davey, B., Billingham, W., Davis, J., Gibson, L., D'Vaz, N., Prescott, S., Silva, D. and Whalan, S. (2023) “Data resource profile: the ORIGINS project databank: a collaborative data resource for investigating the developmental origins of health and disease”, International Journal of Population Data Science, 8(6). doi: 10.23889/ijpds.v8i6.2388.