Research Project
8014890
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): HHS/CDC/NCBDDD and the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation initiated a cooperative agreement to develop and implement a US-Denmark collaborative laboratory and epidemiologic infrastructure - with emphasis on activities drawing on the unique research resources in Denmark (national registries, biobanks and the Danish National Birth Cohort [DNBC]). The focus of this application for the HHS-Denmark program, will build upon the core features of the existing program to carry out current activities and serve as a foundation for potential new or expanded topics. All proposed activities will include one or more of the following core features: 1) enhancement of existing registries and biobanks, 2) registry-based analytic epidemiologic studies;3) DNBC-based analytic epidemiologic studies, including participant-follow-up;and 4) laboratory methods development and application on existing biologic samples. Specifically, we propose to conduct: 1) Registry-based analytic epidemiologic studies including: a. secular trends analyses of autism;b. association between cerebral palsy and coagulation abnormalities;c. association between autism and cerebral palsy and artificial reproductive techniques. 2) DNBC-based analytic epidemiologic studies of: a. childhood developmental effects of lifestyle behaviors in pregnancy;b. prenatal biomarkers and risk factors for autism and cerebral palsy. 3) Laboratory studies of biomarkers of risk and clinical perinatal risk factors for autism and cerebral palsy, with a focus on analyses of biomarkers of infection, inflammation, coagulation abnormalities and brain development. 4) Maintain and enhance the collaborative epidemiologic and laboratory infrastructure: a. Maintain the National Cerebral Palsy Registry;b. Finalize the pilot validation study of autism diagnoses from the Danish Psychiatric Central Register;c. Develop assays for biomarker studies of ASD and CP. Further, we believe we have established a sound infrastructure as the basis for future activities that may arise between HHS and the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation.
