Prenatal origins of respiratory and atopic disorders
Symposium Chairs: L. Duijts (Rotterdam, Netherlands), E. Melén (Stockholm, Sweden)
Aims: to educate the audience about the current state of knowledge concerning the early-life origins of respiratory and atopic disorders. The session will describe what we have learned from 1) epidemiological birth cohort studies: multiple approaches that can be used to strengthen causal inference with respect to prenatal exposures will be described, including Mendelian randomisation, gene-environment interactions, negative parental controls, sibling controls, twin studies and follow-up of children from prenatal intervention trials; 2) experimental studies in animals and humans: how animal models can complement epidemiology in the investigation of this topic will be discussed. The results from recent exciting trials on nutrient supplementation in pregnancy aimed at primary prevention of asthma will also be presented.