BACKGROUND Bendectin was the primary pharmaceutical treatment of nausea and vomiting of pregnancy (NVP) in the United States until the early 1980s. Its manufacture was then discontinued after public allegations that it was causing birth defects. Subsequently, meta-analyses of the many epidemiological cohort and case/control studies used to examine that hypothesis have demonstrated the absence o...

Data from the 1985 Spanish Survey of Fertility including 8789 women aged 18-49 years is used to examine the timing of 1st births from marriage. Premarital births are excluded. Life table estimates are used to describe trends and differentials. A piecewise constant hazard model, which assumes a constant transition rate within each duration segment (0-7, 8-12, 13-18, 19-24, 25-36, and 37-48 mo...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effect of menarche before 11 years of age on the incidence of wheezing/asthma in girls 11 to 18 years of age. METHODS The study sample comprised 1,350 girls from a birth cohort that started in 1993 in the urban area of the city of Pelotas, southern Brazil; this cohort was followed until 18 years of age. We assessed wheezing by the question, "Have you ever had wheezin...

BACKGROUND Excess moisture and visible mold are associated with increased risk of asthma. Only a few studies have performed detailed home visits to characterize the extent and location of moisture damage and mold growth. METHODS Structured home inspections were performed in a birth cohort study when the children were 5 months old (on average). Children (N = 398) were followed up to the age of...

BACKGROUND Adolescent mental health problems are associated with a range of adverse outcomes in adulthood but little is known about the effects on adult parenting practices. This study aimed to examine prospective associations between adolescent conduct and emotional problems and subsequent parenting behaviours in adulthood. METHODS The study sample comprised 1110 members from the MRC Nationa...

BACKGROUND Some observational studies in Western settings show that early introduction of solid food is associated with subsequent obesity. However, introduction of solid food and obesity share social patterning. We examined the association of the timing of the introduction of solid food with BMI and overweight (including obesity) into adolescence in a developed non-Western setting, in which ch...

BACKGROUND Evidence on the role of cannabis as a gateway drug is inconsistent. We characterise patterns of cannabis use among UK teenagers aged 13-18 years, and assess their influence on problematic substance use at age 21 years. METHODS We used longitudinal latent class analysis to derive trajectories of cannabis use from self-report measures in a UK birth cohort. We investigated (1) factors...

BACKGROUND Evidence on socioeconomic and ethnocultural disparities in perinatal health in Canada tends to be limited to analyses by neighbourhood or for selected provinces. In 2010, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research awarded funding for a project on perinatal outcomes. This article describes the resulting 2006 Canadian Birth-Census Cohort Database. DATA AND METHODS From the Canadian L...