Research institute established to study relationship between disease and early stage of life

The city’s first Early Life Research Institute was established at Shanghai’s Xinhua Hospital to study the relationship between disease and the early stage of life including fetus and infanthood, the hospital announced.

The spectrum of children's disease has been changed. Infectious diseases are reducing, while diseases like obesity, asthma, inborn deformity and nervous and mental diseases are rising. 

“Researches have found that obesity in childhood is closely related with chronic diseases like diabetes in adulthood. Some diseases have connection with harmful environmental exposure during pregnancy or infanthood,” said Dr Zhang Jun from Xinhua Hospital. “Exploring the origin of developmental disorders and introducing proper intervention in time are big tasks for the medical field.”

Organs and tissues are in a window period during the early stage of life and are likely to be influenced by exposure inside and outside the womb, resulting in abnormality or poor development. Premature delivery, delayed development in the womb, inborn deformity and other problems in the early stage of life can be related with diseases like cardiovascular diseases, cancer, respiratory diseases and mental diseases.

With both strong capabilities on pediatric and adult diseases, Xinhua plans to build itself a life-long medical facility covering fetus to old age.

“Clinically, treatment for children and adults is separated, so many adult patients have to find another hospital for their diseases which develop from childhood. The medical team they are familiar with since their childhood doesn’t follow their cases after these children grow up,” said Dr Sun Kun, president of Xinhua Hospital. “Some rare diseases show symptoms when the patient is a child and influences his or her whole life. Our hospital will follow the patient's entire life to give proper and long-term treatment and guidance."

Xinhua said it will team up with another four to five maternity and pediatric hospitals to launch a large-scale database to collect biological information and follow pregnant women and their children to record and evaluate early life environment, nutrition, social psychology and other exposures to study the influences of early life to a person’s entire life.