Life course epidemiology
by Yoav Ben-Shlomo

This edition of the International Journal of Epidemiology has four papers and accompanying commentaries that can be conveniently clustered under the heading of life course epidemiology. In the concluding chapter of ‘A life course approach to chronic disease epidemiology’, Diana Kuh and I raised several emerging and common themes that we felt needed to be addressed by future research. These were (i) understanding heterogeneity, (ii) going beyond repeat measures to understand trajectories, (iii) the role of accelerated postnatal weight and height gain and (iv) the use of life cohort cohorts and less conventional designs. All of these topics are addressed to some degree by these publications. ...
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