The study protocol for the NorthPop study has been published in BMC Public Health.
The NorthPop Birth Cohort Study constitutes an infrastructure enabling cutting‑edge research on the foundational pathways to NCDs in childhood, including allergic diseases and asthma, overweight/obesity, cognitive and neurodevelopmental dysfunction, gastrointestinal disorders, and caries.
NorthPop aims to recruit 10,000 families, and at time of writing over 9800 families have been recruited. Pregnant women and their partners residing in Västerbotten County, Sweden are eligible. Recruitment started in 2016 and is anticipated to end in autumn 2025. Extensive data on parental, fetal and child health outcomes, lifestyle, diet, and environmental exposures are prospectively collected using web‑based questionnaires in pregnancy and childhood until the children turn 7 years old.
Urine samples are collected from the pregnant woman at gestational age 14–24 weeks. Blood samples are collected at gestational age 28 weeks. Placenta and cord blood are col‑lected at birth. A breast milk sample is collected 1 month postpartum. Blood samples from the children are collected at 18 months and 7 years of age. Oral swabs and fecal samples are collected from the children within 48 h of birth, at 1, 9 and 18 months, 3 and 7 years of age. At age 7 years, children are invited to a follow‑up visit, including measurements of weight, height, blood pressure, pulse, hand grip strength, working memory, skin prick test and saliva sampling. Additional measurements, such as sleep–wake and light exposure, and additional biological samples are collected in sub‑cohorts. Permission has also been granted for linkage to medical records and national registers.
“This is a landmark publication since it describes the study design in detail, and will be referred to in all future publications based on the NorthPop cohort” said Prof Magnus Domellöf, PI for the NorthPop study and last author of the publication.
About the publication:
West CE, Holgerson PL, Chmielewska A, Lundberg-Ulfsdotter R, Lagerqvist C, Sjöström ES, Wulff K, Sandström O, Mogren I, Silfverdal SA, Domellöf M. NorthPop: a prospective population-based birth cohort study. BMC Public Health. 2025 Jun 26;25(1):2171. doi: 10.1186/s12889-025-23561-y.