Lifelines NEXT is a large study on the course of pregnancy and the health of mother and child. In Lifelines NEXT, which started in 2016, we follow approximately 1,500 pregnant women living in the north of the Netherlands from their third month of pregnancy. We also study the health of the baby up until Lifelines NEXT children are old enough to enter the regular Lifelines study (around the age of 6–10 years). This research is a collaboration between the Departments of Obstetrics, Pediatrics and Genetics of the UMCG and Lifelines.

What is the goal of Lifelines NEXT?

The goal of Lifelines NEXT is to discover why one person develops a chronic illness (a disease such as asthma or diabetes that lasts all your life) in the course of their life while another remains healthy. It is suspected that the foundation for this difference is laid during pregnancy and in the first years of life. But do environment, lifestyle or hereditary predisposition play a role in this? And how does the health of mother and child change during pregnancy and in the years after? These questions are central to Lifelines NEXT. To find answers, Lifelines NEXT uses information from questionnaires, measurements and biomaterials provided by Lifelines NEXT participants, such as blood, feces and breast milk. By linking all the questionnaire responses and measurements, Lifelines NEXT hopes to find out which factors cause a disease to develop and how this could be prevented. In this way, Lifelines NEXT wants to contribute to a healthier future.

Data

Would you like to do research using Lifelines NEXT materials? This is a possibility. To begin, please fill in the application form 'Intended research'. In our Research Data Catalogue (available in 2023) you will find an overview of all the biomaterials and questionnaires that we collect in Lifelines NEXT. In this overview you can see when biomaterials are collected and questionnaires are sent. For the content of the questionnaires, click here. An application for data is assessed by the principal investigators of Lifelines NEXT.

What kind of research is being done in Lifelines NEXT?

In Lifelines NEXT, there are several questions we want to answer using the biomaterials we collect (e.g. blood, stool, and breast milk) and the information from questionnaires. To answer all these questions, various lines of research have been set out. Here you will find more information about the different research lines in which Lifelines NEXT is involved.

Research results

The research results of research with Lifelines NEXT data will be published as scientific articles. Available publications are listed below.

• het Lifelines NEXT paper

Abstract

Epidemiological research has shown there to be a strong relationship between preconceptional, prenatal, birth and early-life factors and lifelong health. The Lifelines NEXT is a birth cohort designed to study the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic determinants on health and disease in a four-generation design. It is embedded within the Lifelines cohort study, a prospective three-generation population-based cohort study recording the health and health-related aspects of 167,729 individuals living in Northern Netherlands. In Lifelines NEXT we aim to include 1500 pregnant Lifelines participants and intensively follow them, their partners and their children until at least 1 year after birth. Longer-term follow-up of physical and psychological health will then be embedded following Lifelines procedures. During the Lifelines NEXT study period biomaterials-including maternal and neonatal (cord) blood, placental tissue, feces, breast milk, nasal swabs and urine-will be collected from the mother and child at 10 time points. We will also collect data on medical, social, lifestyle and environmental factors via questionnaires at 14 different time points and continuous data via connected devices. The extensive collection of different (bio)materials from mother and child during pregnancy and afterwards will provide the means to relate environmental factors including maternal and neonatal microbiome composition) to (epi)genetics, health and developmental outcomes. The nesting of the study within Lifelines enables us to include preconceptional transgenerational data and can be used to identify other extended families within the cohort.

Contact

Do you have questions about Lifelines NEXT? Please let us know via our contact form.