Study population
This study was imbedded in an ongoing prospective cohort study among
Dutch pregnant women, the PRegnancy and Infant DEvelopment (PRIDE)
Study. The aim of the PRIDE Study is to identify factors that may
influence the health of women and their offspring during and after
pregnancy. In short, pregnant women aged ≥18 years were invited for
participation by their prenatal care providers at their first prenatal
care visit, through the ‘Moeders voor Moeders’ initiative, or online
advertisements. The median gestational age at enrollment was 9.9 weeks.
Participants were asked to complete web-based questionnaires at
enrollment, gestational weeks 17 and 34, and biannually after delivery.
Furthermore, consent was asked to obtain records from prenatal care
providers and pharmacists. A detailed description of the PRIDE Study can
be found elsewhere [26]. For the current study, we selected all
PRIDE Study participants with ongoing pregnancies who completed the
first follow-up questionnaire at gestational week 17 between September
2013 and February 2018 (N=4,851).
The PRIDE Study was approved by the Regional Committee on Research
Involving Human Subjects Arnhem-Nijmegen (CMO 2009/305). Women were
asked to participate on a completely voluntary basis and gave their
informed consent digitally through the Internet.