DOHaD Cohort Studies and Public Health Implications in Japan

Abstract

Because the “Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD)” hypothesis recently became widely known in a medical research area, fetal and childhood environment has been drawing more attention. In addition, based on the DOHaD, childhood growth trajectories, which are described by multilevel analysis, might be important in examining the effects of early-life environment. Therefore, it becomes more important to establish epidemiological evidence related to DOHaD from population-based birth cohort studies which include the study that uses the dataset from some public health activities. Moreover, it is also important to apply the findings from these studies to public health. In this chapter, some nationwide and local birth cohort studies and the results related to DOHaD from these studies are introduced. For instance, the association between maternal smoking status during pregnancy and birthweight from “Japanese Environment and Children’s Study” which is conducted by the Ministry of Environment, and childhood growth trajectories according to maternal smoking status during pregnancy from Project Koshu, are described.