Cohort profile: cerebral palsy in the Norwegian and Danish birth cohorts (MOBAND-CP)

The purpose of MOthers and BAbies in Norway and Denmark cerebral palsy (MOBAND-CP) was to study CP aetiology in a prospective design.

MOBAND-CP is a cohort of more than 210 000 children, created as a collaboration between the world's two largest pregnancy cohorts-the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort study (MoBa) and the Danish National Birth Cohort. MOBAND-CP includes maternal interview/questionnaire data collected during pregnancy and follow-up, plus linked information from national health registries.

Initial harmonisation of data from the 2 cohorts has created 140 variables for children and their mothers. In the MOBAND-CP cohort, 438 children with CP have been identified through record linkage with validated national registries, providing by far the largest such sample with prospectively collected detailed pregnancy data. Several studies investigating various hypotheses regarding CP aetiology are currently on-going.

Additional data can be harmonised as necessary to meet requirements of new projects. Biological specimens collected during pregnancy and at delivery are potentially available for assay, as are results from assays conducted on these specimens for other projects. The study size allows consideration of CP subtypes, which is rare in aetiological studies of CP. In addition, MOBAND-CP provides a platform within the context of a merged birth cohort of exceptional size that could, after appropriate permissions have been sought, be used for cohort and case-cohort studies of other relatively rare health conditions of infants and children.