Keith Godfrey

University of Southampton
Professor of Epidemiology and Human Development, MRC Epidemiology Resource Centre and University of Southampton; Honorary Consultant, Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust

Keith Godfrey BM, PhD, FRCP is Professor of Epidemiology & Human Development at the MRC Epidemiology Resource Centre and University of Southampton and an Honorary Consultant within Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust. His research is defining measures to improve the early growth and development of children, thereby improving their lifelong health. Keith's other appointments include Trustee of the UK registered charity the International Society for the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, Deputy Director of the Centre for Developmental Origins of Health & Disease, and Deputy Director of the National Institute for Health Research Southampton Nutrition, Diet and Lifestyle Biomedical Research Unit.

Working Group

Health Inequality (HI)

Additional Information

Homepage: http://www.som.soton.ac.uk/about/staff/listing/profile.asp?kmg

Research Interests:

Research from our group has established that people who were small at birth and had poor growth in infancy have an increased risk of adult coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes, particularly if this is followed by increased childhood weight gain. Impaired early growth is also linked with other sources of ill-health including later osteoporosis, obstructive airways disease and asthma. The relations between smaller infant size and ill-health in adulthood extend across the normal range of infant size in a graded manner. Within the MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, research in the Southampton Women's Survey (SWS) and other cohort studies is defining measures to improve the early growth and development of children, thereby improving their lifelong health. In the SWS, 12,500 women aged 20 to 34 years have been characterised before pregnancy and detailed pre- and postnatal measurements have been made on the 3,160 women who subsequently become pregnant and delivered in Southampton. The SWS is the only population-based study in the developed world of a large and representative group of women who were characterised before pregnancy and had longitudinal measurements of fetal growth rates during pregnancy. Epigenetic processes linking developmental exposures with later phenotypes are a major focus of the ongoing research.

Related Papers:

Hanson MA, Godfrey KM, Lillycrop KA, Burdge GC, and Gluckman P. 2011
Developmental plasticity and developmental origins of non-communicable disease: theoretical considerations and epigenetic mechanisms
In press, Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology

Godfrey KM, Sheppard A, Gluckman PD, Lillycrop KA, Burdge GC, McLean C, Rodford J, Slater-Jefferies JL, Garratt E, Crozier SR, Emerald BS, Gale CR, Inskip HM, Cooper C, and Hanson MA 2011
Epigenetic gene promoter methylation at birth is associated with child's later adiposity
Diabetes, 60: 1528-34.