ABCD
Amsterdam Born Children and their Development
The ABCD infrastructure comprises extensive health data of ~8000 pregnant women and their children, born in Amsterdam. ABCD focuses on early life factors that influence health and development. During pregnancy, women participated in a biobank (blood), filled out a questionnaire and the database was enriched with registery data. Follow-up data are collected in the offspring at birth, age 3 months, 5-6 years, 7-8 years, 11-12 years, 15-16 years, 16-17 years, 19-21 years. This follow-up data contains questionnaire data, cognitive assessments and physical measurments, like: anthropometry, blood pressure, electrocardiogram, metabolic factors, physical fitness and linkage to existing registries.
Infrastructure and User Services
Data collection of the ABCD database took place in seven measurement rounds between 2003/2004 and 2023/2025. Approximately 8000 pregnant women in Amsterdam were included. an Surinamese, South-Asian Surinamese, Ghanaian, and Dutch origin. Ethnic origin is determined from a person’s country of birth and that of his/her parents. Subjects were randomly sampled, stratified by ethnic origin, from those aged 18–70 years listed in the Amsterdam Municipal Register, and invited to participate in HELIUS.
When individuals agreed to participate, they filled in an extensive questionnaire. Participants unable to fill in the questionnaire were offered assistance from a trained (ethnically matched) interviewer. The questionnaire addresses the presence (or symptoms) of cardiovascular diseases, mental health disorders, and infectious diseases as well as determinants or risk factors for these diseases and disorders. Examples of risk factors that were addressed: demographic variables (marital status, household composition), migration history, educational and occupational level, religion, cultural distance (acculturation), perceived discrimination, lifestyle factors (smoking, alcohol intake, cannabis use, physical activity, travel behavior, sexual behavior), health care use, family history of diseases, stressful life events. For a complete cohort profile see Eijsden et al. (IJE 2011).
Examples/description of the type of research
The general objectives of the ABCD study are to describe ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in child health and development from the earliest age onwards, and to identify sensitive periods when these disparities arise. Additionally we aim to determine to what extent life style, environmental factors and genetic predisposition contribute to these disparities. Within this study, there is an emphasis on the development of overweight, cardio-metabolic health, psychosocial health and cognition. The main themes related to these outcomes are nutrition, physical activity, physical fitness, sleep behaviour and genetic predisposition.
How to access the infrastructure ?
Mostly we set up DTAs and tranfer the data (70%), 20% by federated analysis (external server), 10% by providing a guest account.