# Multi-site Data for Nutrition Studies in Healthy Early Childhood

> **NIH NIH R03** · BOSTON CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL · 2022 · $88,500

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
This project aims to release our recently gathered unique data for nutrition studies of healthy term-born infants
through school age. Brain development is a major health domain, and infancy is a period when the brain develops
most rapidly and is perhaps most vulnerable to the lack of nutrition. Studies on nutrition’s effect on brain health
are mostly on the elderly especially dementia populations. Very few studies on nutrition’s effect on brain healthy
are on infants, but mostly on infants born pre-term, who clearly need nutrition supplements but only account for
~10% of all newborns. Term-born healthy infants constitute ~90% of newborns, and they pose specific
requirement for nutrition, but are rarely studied. In 2014-2018 (clinical trial NCT02058225), we have acquired
comprehensive data to study how maternal dietary intake of nutrition impacts healthy term-born infants’ brain
health during the first 3 months after birth. In 2019-2020, we have additionally collected neurocognitive outcome
questionnaires now that those children are in early school age. Overall, our data were collected in two large
women’s and children’s hospitals for 145 healthy mother-infant dyads. Our data include: (1) demographics of
parents and infants; (2) food frequency questionnaires (FFQ) of maternal dietary intake of nutrition during
lactation, which were already converted into 73 nutrients; (3) milk feeding patterns (breastmilk- or formula, or a
combination); (4) socioeconomic status and lifestyle questionnaires from the parents; (5) breastmilk nutrition
components; (6) maternal macular pigment ocular density (MPOD), which is an easy-to-obtain, quantitative
reflection of specific maternal nutrition in carotenoids; (7) infant brain MRI (structural, diffusion, functional) at 1
and 3-month of life after birth; (8) infant Mullen score reflecting neurocognitive functions at 3 months (e.g., motor);
and (9) neurocognitive questionnaires and the converted neurocognitive scores at early school age (4-6 years).
We propose to organize the data (Aim 1), process and harmonize multi-site MRI (Aim 2), and publicly-release
this otherwise rarely-available comprehensive data (Aim 3). This data can help study how dietary and breastmilk
nutrition are related to early-infancy brain structure and function, how they correlate with school-age
neurocognition, and how they interact with socioeconomic status and demographic factors.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10528096
- **Project number:** 1R03HD107124-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** BOSTON CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL
- **Principal Investigator:** Yangming Ou
- **Activity code:** R03 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $88,500
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-08-04 → 2024-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10528096

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10528096, Multi-site Data for Nutrition Studies in Healthy Early Childhood (1R03HD107124-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-29 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10528096. Licensed CC0.

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