RECRUITING

Genetic Risk, Parental Feeding Practices, and Appetitive Traits in Early Life

Study Overview

This clinical trial focuses on testing the efficacy of different digital interventions to promote re-engagement in cancer-related long-term follow-up care for adolescent and young adult (AYA) survivors of childhood cancer.

Description

The preschool years (2-5 years of age) is a critical timeframe to shape the lifetime risk of obesity. While the causes of obesity are complex, appetitive traits related to overeating, such as high food approach and low food avoidance, are robustly associated with a greater BMI among children. Some children are genetically pre-disposed to expressing obesogenic appetitive traits, and those traits may mediate a genetic risk for obesity. Separately, parental feeding practices are emerging as an important, yet modifiable, influence on children's obesity risk. Coercive control feeding practices, such as strictly limiting a child's intake of highly palatable foods (restriction) and using food to control children's negative emotions (emotional feeding), are believed to be detrimental for young children because they impede self-regulatory skills around eating and may increase the saliency of highly palatable foods. The goal for this project is to disentangle the inter-relationships between coercive control feeding practices, children's obesogenic appetitive traits, and children's dietary intake across the preschool years to understand how coercive control feeding practices ultimately impact children's adiposity gain over time. Importantly, the investigators aim to understand how those effects differ based on children's underlying genetic risk for obesity. The investigators hypothesize that parents will respond to children's obesogenic appetitive traits by exhibiting more coercive control feeding practices (restriction, emotional feeding), which in turn, will promote future increase in obesogenic appetitive traits and overconsumption, leading to excess adiposity gain among children. Importantly, the investigators hypothesize children with a high genetic risk for obesity will be most susceptible to the negative effects of coercive control feeding practices because food is highly salient for them. The investigators will test the hypotheses among a cohort of children aged 2.5 years old using a longitudinal study design with repeated assessments every 6 months until children are 5 years old. If successful, study findings may be leveraged to develop tailored strategies to help parents support healthy eating behaviors among their young children that consider the heterogeneity in obesogenic appetitive traits among young children due to genetic risk factors.

Official Title

Characterizing the Relationships of Genetic Risk and Parental Coercive Feeding Practices With Appetitive Traits and Adiposity Gain Across Early Life.

Quick Facts

Study Start:2024-07-18
Study Completion:2029-08
Study Type:Not specified
Phase:Not Applicable
Enrollment:Not specified
Status:RECRUITING

Study ID

NCT06534541

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Ages Eligible for Study:27 Months to 72 Months
Sexes Eligible for Study:ALL
Accepts Healthy Volunteers:Yes
Standard Ages:CHILD
Inclusion CriteriaExclusion Criteria
  1. * parent must be ≥18 years old, have primary custody of their child for ≥75% of the month, comprehend verbal and written English and not plan to move out of Vermont or New Hampshire during the study timeframe.
  2. * Children must be ≥2.25 and ≤2.99 years old at first visit and have normal or corrected-to-normal vision to enable eye tracking.
  1. * Children with any relevant food allergies or dietary restrictions, taking medication or with a medical condition that affects appetite or attention, or with a relative enrolled in the study will be excluded.

Contacts and Locations

Study Contact

Jennifer Emond, PhD
CONTACT
1-603-646-5709
jennifer.emond@dartmouth.edu

Principal Investigator

Jennifer Emond, PhD
PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
Dartmouth College
Diane Gilbert-Diamond, ScD
PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
Dartmouth College

Study Locations (Sites)

Dartmotuh College
Hanover, New Hampshire, 03765
United States

Collaborators and Investigators

Sponsor: Trustees of Dartmouth College

  • Jennifer Emond, PhD, PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR, Dartmouth College
  • Diane Gilbert-Diamond, ScD, PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR, Dartmouth College

Study Record Dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Registration Dates

Study Start Date2024-07-18
Study Completion Date2029-08

Study Record Updates

Study Start Date2024-07-18
Study Completion Date2029-08

Terms related to this study

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

  • Childhood Obesity