The Gen2020 study
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on global health, especially on expectant families and their infants, and has raised many questions about its long-term effects. Maternal immune activation as a result of infection, the changes to clinical care and early childhood social interaction as well as a greater level of parental anxiety can influence the mother-baby environment and baby’s brain development.
This study is part of a larger research programme which also carries out laboratory studies. In these pages however, we are focussing on the clinical studies of Gen2020.
We are interested in following up on children who were in utero during the years when COVID-19 infection was prevalent. We are interested in observing how their brains work, as well as how they interact with their environment and learn. We hope that by finding out if some children born during the COVID-19 pandemic are experiencing any difficulties in cognitive, emotional and social development, we can start to explain how these changes come about and help those with difficulties in the future. In addition, it is also very important for us to understand ‘resilience’, or how positive childhood outcomes come about in the face of possible changes to early environment.
The hope is that by mapping the fetal origins of childhood brain health, this research will be relevant beyond COVID-19 and help inform prognosis, prevention, monitoring and intervention strategies to optimise childhood outcomes. The outcomes of this study could have potential implications for pregnant mothers and babies in both pandemic and non-pandemic settings.