EU-Funded Project
Abbreviation:
EarlyNutrition
Title:
Long-term effects of early nutrition on later health.
In short:
International initiative to dissect the long-term effects of early nutrition on later health.
Tags:
Pharma/ biotech
Project Details
Funding scheme:
FP7-KBBE-2011-5 – Grant Agreement ID 289346
Time frame:
1 February 2012 to 31 October 2017
Weblink:
Description:
The increase in overweight children constitutes a major health concern for future diseases such as obesity and diabetes. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to translate scientific knowledge into dietary recommendations that are implemented early on in life. Accumulating evidence indicates that early nutrition and lifestyle have long-term effects on later health. Food choices during pregnancy and eating patterns in infancy can affect a range of different bodily functions. These programmed changes in the body increase the likelihood of becoming overweight and developing consequent metabolic disorders which manifest later in life. Although metabolic programming for obesity is multifactorial, maternal obesity and excessive pregnancy weight gain emerge as independent risk factors of obesity in childhood. The EarlyNutrition project was a large collaborative effort among researchers from 35 institutions in 12 European countries, the United States and Australia who joined forces to fill the gap between scientific advances and their practical implementation into recommendations for everyday life. Within that collaborative effort, GenomeScan performed multiple genome-wide analyses of DNA methylation profiles, which shed a light on the extent to which the risks associated with developing adverse metabolic outcomes in children are underpinned by specific epigenetic modifications of genes, either in the pre- or postnatal period.
Output:
The project EarlyNutrition yielded 243 publications (http://www.project-earlynutrition.eu/eneu/index.php?site=publications)
Acknowledgements:
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement No 289346.
