The Early Nutrition Programming Project

23/04/09
Results of the EARNEST trial, the EU Childhood Obesity Project are published online in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition today.....More

25/03/09
The Proceedings of the 2007 Budapest Conference have now been published. Click here to get 20% off the list price. Regular price: € 119.95, Discount Price € 95.96 (excluding VAT and shipping)

17/09/08
The second international conference on Maternal and Infant Nutrition and Nurture will be held on 8th to 10th September 2009 in Cumbria, UK. The deadline for abstracts is 1st December 2008.......more

25/07/08
ALSPAC, one of the EARNEST cohorts, has been cited in an article in the Lancet Neurology on the link between poverty and brain development. The article also mentions the new FP7 project NUTRIMENTHE which is coordinated by Professor Cristina Campoy from University of Granada, Spain......more

22/07/08
Researchers at the Institute of Child Health, London and Southampton have found that boys, but not girls, who had a lower birth weight (though within the normal range) had a poorer response to a psychosocial stress test when aged between 7 and 9 years. Lower birth weight was linked to higher vascular resistance and higher blood pressure for a longer period of time in the study published in the European Heart Journal......more

06/05/08
New evidence that breastfeeding leads to improved intelligence was published today. The Probit study, one of the trials in Earnest, is a randomised trial of breastfeeding promotion. Mothers who received breastfeeding promotion were more likely to exclusively breast feed their children for longer. Six years later, their children performed significantly better in IQ tests than those whose mothers had not received the breastfeeding promotion.......more

20/02/08
More evidence that nutrition in the first few weeks of life can affect brain development.......more

08/02/08
Good early nutrition raises adult economic success.....more (please note free registration is required to view this article at The Lancet).

03/01/08
The Early Nutrition Academy is sponsoring an international symposium on "Demonstrating Early Nutrition Programming in humans and animal models" to be held in Granada, Spain on 23 April 2008. The symposium will hold workshops on Obesity and Insulin Resistance; Brain Development and Mental Performance; Immune system development; and Infant Feeding Policies and Communication.
More....
www.enasymposium2008.org

03/01/08
The HELENA project will be holding a conference on the latest developments in physical activity and lifestyle in European adolescents in Granada, Spain on 21st-22nd April, 2008. More...

10/12/07
The next Association for the Study of Obesity conference will be on the early development of obesity, including food preferences, and appetite regulation. It is to be held in Liverpool on Friday 28th March 2008. Click below for more details.

12/11/07
We are very sorry to report the death of Dr Andy Coward on 3rd November 2007. Andy Coward was involved in the CHOP project and he will be much missed by his colleagues. More....

01/11/07
WCRF Report recognises importance of early nutrition programming for prevention of breast cancer Amongst the many conclusions in World Cancer Research Fund’s Expert Report on Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity and the Prevention of Cancer published today, the Expert Panel agreed that greater birth weight or factors that lead to greater birth weight are probably a cause of premenopausal breast cancer. The proposed mechanisms, such as the long term programming of hormonal systems, could plausibly increase cancer risk. They went on to recommend that understanding the factors that influence growth, and how they might modify the risk of cancer and other chronic diseases, is an important question for future research, including the relative importance of genetic and environmental factors, and when in the life course nutritional factors might be most relevant. Identifying optimal growth trajectories that protect health not only in childhood but also throughout life is a major challenge for the research and public health communities. http://www.dietandcancerreport.org/

12/10/07
The fourth newsletter is now ready for downloading on the Reports & Newsletters page.

31/08/07
Pregnant women should take a daily supplement of omega-3 acids, an EU supported consensus committee has recommended. The supplement would increase the likelihood of a healthy birth and boost child development. (more)

27/07/07 WHO have published the first ever report highlighting children's special susceptibility to harmful chemical exposures at different periods of their growth. This new volume of the Environmental Health Criteria series, Principles for Evaluating Health Risks in Children Associated with Exposure to Chemicals, is the most comprehensive work yet undertaken on the scientific principles to be considered in assessing health risks in children. They acknowledge that emerging evidence suggests that an increased risk of certain diseases in adults such as cancer and heart disease can result in part from exposures to certain environmental chemicals during childhood. While its focus is on environmental toxicants rather than the nutritional environment of the developing fetus, the report recognises the importance of critical windows of development and makes research recommendations which cover similar ground to that of metabolic programming.

27/06/07 Online registration for the second EuroFIR International Congress to be held in Granada, Spain on 26 and 27th September 2007 is now open. More.....

20/04/07
The first results of the EU Childhood Obesity Study are presented in Budapest today.
Media Release
Factsheet

12/06/06
May 2006: Partner Berthold Koletzko received a $500,000 grant from the Bristol-Myers Squibb Freedom to Discover program!
The Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation believes granting some of the best scientists of our time the financial freedom to pursue groundbreaking work without restrictions of any kind is the best first step towards unlocking those mysteries.
Distinguished Achievement Awards - a component of the Bristol-Myers Squibb Freedom to Discover Grants and Awards Program - are presented annually to individuals for outstanding contributions in the fields of cancer, cardiovascular, infectious diseases, metabolic diseases, neuroscience and nutrition. Award recipients in each field receive a $500,000 prize and a silver medallion. Six million dollars in grants were awarded this year.

April 2006: Partner Alan Lucas received the James Spencer Medal!

Professor Alan Lucas receiving the James Spence medal from Princess Anne. The James Spence medal is the highest award in Paediatrics in the UK. The 'other person' in the picture is Professor Sir Alan Craft, the President of the Royal College of Physicians and Child Health.

The James Spence medal was first awarded to Professor Sir Alan Moncrieff in 1960. James Spence, after whom the award is named, was a prominent pioneer of British Paediatrics notably of 'social medicine' - who died in 1954.

The James Spence medal has been awarded to a number of contributors to paediatrics including those who are not in fact paediatricians. The most distinguished past recipient of the medal in the field of nutrition was Professor McCance.

27/04/06
The European Technology Platform Food for Life has produced a Stakeholders' Strategic Research Agenda for the next 15 years. Many of the goals and challenges it identifies are relevant to the Early Nutrition Programming Project's objectives. You can download it here.

In addition, an extensive cultural programme has been arranged that will leave lasting memories of Malaysia's culture and famous hospitality. An exciting programme of pre and post tours will give delegates the possibility to explore not only Peninsular Malaysia and the states Malaysian Borneo but also its neighbouring countries such as Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.

10/01/06
The Early Nutrition Programming abstract service is now available. Click here.

10/01/06
A network of European birth cohorts has been established with help from the Early Nutrition Programming Project. More details at www.birthcohorts.net

10/01/06
We are sorry to report the death of one of our partners, Professor Nick Hales from the University of Cambridge on September 15th 2005.......more information

08/12/05
The Early Nutrition Programming Project was well represented at the recent conference on Developmental Origins of Adult Health and Disease in Toronto.......more.

08/12/05
European data on stroke and CHD morbidity, CVD mortality and hypertension prevalence has been collected together and is now available for downloading.

28/10/05
The 16th European Childhood Obesity Group Workshop will be held in Rzeszow, Poland, on June 1-3, 2006. The aim of this meeting is to present new scientific data in the field of childhood obesity and to analyse the consequences of the recent study in everyday practice. Abstracts on diagnostic and therapeutic aspects of childhood obesity and ideas about efficient methods of obesity prevention are invited. The deadline for submission is 31st January 2006.