| dc.description.abstract | Birthweight is of major interest because of its associations with the baby’s survival rate in the first year of life, childhood development and the onset of diseases in later adult life. Maternal characteristics are important in determining a baby’s birthweight, and the fetal genotype is a crucial determinant of offspring birthweight. However, the contribution of genetics on top of other determinants of birthweight has not been explored before. The first part of this PhD investigated the contributions of genetics in explaining variation in offspring birthweight on top of routinely available clinical features.
An important feature associated with a baby’s survival rate and its adult health, birthweight, varies across ethnic groups. It has been found that South Asian babies are on average of lesser weight than European babies despite a higher maternal fasting glucose level, a higher parity, and a lower rate of smoking in the mothers. Genetic associations with birthweight within South Asians and Europeans have been compared before but comparison between the contributions of genetics on top of other clinical features in the two ethnic groups has not been done before and this is what the second part of this thesis aimed at investigating.
Finally, to cater for antenatal and postnatal care, it is important to be able to predict a baby’s birthweight. Current clinical practice uses the mother’s fasting glucose level as a means of assessing the risk of a baby being born large-for-gestational age (LGA), but this determinant of birthweight has not been used in a prediction of LGA before in healthy pregnancies. The final part of this PhD aims at building a clinical prediction model, using maternal fasting glucose and other routinely available clinical features for estimating the risk of LGA in babies in a European and South Asian population. In conclusion, this thesis has investigated the associations of genetics with birthweight, on top of other routinely available clinical features in European and South Asian babies as well as the prediction of risk of delivering a baby with LGA in these two ethnicities. | en_GB |
