Principal Investigator: Matthew Gilman
Project Viva is a cohort study of over 2000 pregnant women and their offspring, examining the roles of pre- and peri-natal factors in outcomes of pregnancy, such as fetal growth, length of gestation, and gestational diabetes, and of childhood, such as obesity, cardiovascular risk, asthma, and neurodevelopment. Salient features include the following: 1) prospectively collected data on diet, physical activity/inactivity, social, environmental, demographic, economic, psychological, and lifestyle variables; 2) blood samples collected from mothers in the 1 st and 2 nd trimesters of pregnancy, from venous umbilical cord blood and delivery, and from mothers and children at age 3 years, with aliquots of red and white blood cells and plasma; 3) directly measured anthropometry, blood pressure, and cognition in infancy and childhood; 4) the unique resource of the EpicCare automated medical record system of Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates (HVMA, the recruitment site), which provides, among other things, details of medical and reproductive history, medication use, serial weights and blood pressures, and labor and delivery records, and in the children who remain part of the group practice, serial growth measures, outpatient and inpatient medical diagnoses, and medication use; 5) a collaborative research team with expertise in the different disciplines represented in the study.
Selected results to date relevant for possible future studies of neurodevelopment include
