January 2016

The First 1000 Days of Life…and Beyond Study

We’ve Come a Long Way

Hello Families of the Inova Translational Medicine Institute (ITMI) “The First 1000 Days of Life…and Beyond” study.

This newsletter is the first to celebrate the enrollment of 2,500 families and the third birthdays of our oldest participants. We will be sending newsletters to keep you updated on the progress of our families, our study and the Inova research community.

It’s been three years since we launched “The First 1000 Days of Life…and Beyond” study as a multi-generational study of 5,000+ families – including grandparents, parents, children and other relatives – with a goal of generating 20,000 whole genomes! We have many families who participated in a second or third pregnancy—so as your family grows so do we!

Our study is identifying genomic, clinical, and environmental risk factors that may enhance our understanding of adverse health outcomes. These include premature birth, asthma, obesity, and developmental disorders. Recruitment began in early 2012, and the first samples were collected in April, 2012. Our accrual is approximately 80 new families per month.

We are interpreting and analyzing more than 3 billion base pairs and 25,000 genes on each of you—and that is quite a challenge! We currently have 7,000+ whole genome sequences from family members who were born in over 100 different countries. This makes our data set unique. We mirror our diverse community in many ways which is important to the genomic success of the study. Clinical and environmental factors of this study add to the knowledge about the role of genomics in health and disease.

As you know, you have been completing our follow-up surveys every six months and we’re very pleased to let you know that we receive these surveys from more than 89 percent of study participants! This adds to the richness of our longitudinal data.

The goal of this study is to understand how our genome works and how this “human instruction manual“ changes our life’s course. Genomic information of this complexity has never before been integrated with clinical data to direct decision making in health care. Thank you so very much for your continued participation to help Inova make this happen!

Contact info:
Inova Translational Medicine Institute
Inova Fairfax Medical Campus
3300 Gallows Road Falls Church, VA 22042
www.inova.org/itmi