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Approaches for drawing causal inferences from epidemiological birth cohorts: A review

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Caroline Relton

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Abstract

Large-scale population-based birth cohorts, which recruit women during pregnancy or at birth and follow up their offspring through infancy and into childhood and adolescence, provide the opportunity to monitor and model early life exposures in relation to developmental characteristics and later life outcomes. However, due to confounding and other limitations, identification of causal risk factors has proved challenging and published findings are often not reproducible. A suite of methods has been developed in recent years to minimise problems afflicting observational epidemiology, to strengthen causal inference and to provide greater insights into modifiable intra-uterine and early life risk factors. The aim of this review is to describe these causal inference methods and to suggest how they may be applied in the context of birth cohorts and extended along with the development of birth cohort consortia and expansion of "omic" technologies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Richmond RC, Al-Amin A, Smith GD, Relton CL

Publication type: Review

Publication status: Published

Journal: Early Human Development

Year: 2014

Volume: 90

Issue: 11

Pages: 769-780

Print publication date: 01/11/2014

Online publication date: 22/09/2014

ISSN (print): 0378-3782

ISSN (electronic): 1872-6232

Publisher: ELSEVIER IRELAND LTD

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.earlhumdev.2014.08.023

DOI: 10.1016/j.earlhumdev.2014.08.023

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