Entebbe Mother and Baby Study (EMaBS)

The initial objective of the EMaBS was to evaluate the impact of maternal helminths and their treatment, and childhood helminths and their treatment, on the response to childhood immunisations and on incidence of infection and atopic disease in childhood in Uganda up to age 5 years.

Follow-up of the EMaBS birth cohort is continuing to assess the longer-term effects of maternal and childhood helminths and their treatment on allergy and infectious disease outcomes and on proxy markers for non-communicable diseases. As well as addressing our main objectives, the cohort is helping us to understand many other aspects of the effects of exposures early in life on health outcomes later in life. Living in a tropical setting which includes both urban and rural environments, EMaBS mothers and children are often exposed to factors that are not common in resource rich settings. Worms and malaria are obvious examples but other infections are also common.