The Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Research has awarded the Project named EPINED II to Prf. Fina Canals, PROEMA member.
The EPINED II project is part of the Research Challenge “Health, demographic change and well-being” and is a follow-up study of a school population sample (representative of the Tarragona province) without risk of autism spectrum disorders (ASD), social communication disorder (SCD) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), with subclinical diagnosis and with diagnosis of these disorders in two age periods, which were widely evaluated in the EPINED project (PSI2015-64837-P). The general aim of the project is to investigate clinical, cognitive, biological, psychosocial and environmental predictors of the neurodevelopment disorders (ND) course after 3-5 years of its initial evaluation, obtaining a potential sample of 757 children aged between 8-10 and 14-16 years. The natural longitudinal course of these disorders will be investigated, assessing the specificity/non-specificity of early manifestations, the effect of comorbidities and of cognitive, social, educational and environmental characteristics on their prognosis, as well as the incidence of new diagnoses of ASD, SCD and ADHD. The relationship of the previous and current nutritional status with the ND, the effect of the function and the microbiota composition on the course of ADHD, and in general, the interactive effect of all the multidisciplinary factors on the clinical course of the ND will be studied. In a first stage, parents and teachers questionnaires to detect new cases of risk of ND as well as internalized and externalized disorder will be administered to the whole sample. In the second stage, parents of children with a previous clinical and subclinical diagnosis of ND, with new risks of ND and risk of the other disorders will be interviewed using the K-SADS clinical structured interview. The familial and school functional impact will be assessed, and parents will also report data on sociodemographic characteristics, use of health care services, food consumption and executive functioning of the children. The academic performance (grades) will be provided by the schools. Some executive functions, clinical manifestations, perception of the parents’ educational style, quality of life and anthropometric status of the whole sample will be assessed. The results of the EPINED II project will provide knowledge on the natural course of ND and risk and/or protective factors contributing to the detection and targeted preventive intervention in the educational, familial, and social environment to reduce the dysfunctional effect of these disorders.
The team is also composed by Drs. Paula Morales, Nuria Voltas y Carmen Hernández.
