Bristol 'study of life' gets £8m boost to continue work

The original "babies" from the Children of the 90s are now starting their own families who are also involved in the project

A project studying the health and wellbeing of babies born in the early 1990s in Bristol has received £8.2m in funding for the next five years.

The Children of the 90s study recruited 14,500 pregnant women to follow their health and that of their children.

Researchers plan to use the money to run online questionnaires, hold face-to-face clinics and access medical records - with participants' approval.

There are now three generations of people in the study.

Prof Nic Timpson, who is leading the project, said the questionnaires would add a different dimension to the study.

Clinics will be used to take blood samples, test people's physical strength and mobility and measure height and weight to form a broader picture of overall wellbeing.

Medical records would - with the permission of the participants - also be accessed.

"We can fill in some of the gaps - it's not a deep dive into people's records," Prof Timpson said.

"It is a topping up of ordinary data that would normally would have been thrown away and will allow researchers to enrich that data set.

"It can fill in missing data that we don't have."

He added that since the study began, 2,000 papers had been published using Children of the 90s data, including 161 last year.

These covered areas such as public health, biological science and clinical medicine.

Funding has come from the Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust, and University of Bristol.