Cohort profile update: The 1993 Pelotas (Brazil) Birth Cohort follow-up at 30 years

Resumo

The original cohort
Pelotas, a medium-sized city in southern Brazil, is located in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, and has approximately 336 000 inhabitants [1]. As far as we know, it is the only city in a middle-income Latin American country that has information on the health of four cohorts, with an interval of 11 years between each one. The first birth cohort was recruited during 1982, and additional birth cohorts were recruited during the calendar years 1993, 2004, and 2015 [2–5].

Of the 5265 eligible children, the 1993 Birth Cohort study included 5249 participants born from 1 January to 31 December of the same year (99.7% of all births occurring in Pelotas; 16 refusals). To be eligible, their mothers should live in the urban areas of the municipality or in the Jardim América neighborhood, in Capão do Leão municipality, which was part of Pelotas in 1982. All mothers of the participants were interviewed, and their children were measured right after delivery [6–8]. This cohort has already had 12 follow-ups, with biological samples, anthropometry, and disease precursors examinations collected in most waves.