Cohort Profile: the Danish National Birth Cohort from foetal life to young adulthood

The Danish National Birth Cohort (DNBC) was established to provide prospectively collected high-quality data for life-course studies of health. The ambition was a large-scale womb-to-tomb cohort with rich exposure information, a biobank, and option to link to existing health and social register data.

In total, 100 407 pregnancies with a median gestational age of 10 weeks were enrolled across Denmark. From these pregnancies, 96 822 participants were born alive from 1996 to 2003 by 88 122 unique mothers. The participants cover 28% of eligible Danes.

As of 2024, 89 476 participants aged 21–28 (median: 24) years, and 82 716 mothers aged 38–74 (median: 54) years are still actively enrolled.

Self-reports on living conditions and exposures, health and development were collected six times during pregnancy and infancy, and at child age 7, 11, 14, and 18 for the entire cohort. The response rate was 90% in the first pregnancy interview and 56% in the 18-year follow-up. In 2013–2014, mothers reported on exposures, health, and stressors associated with reproduction. Topic-specific collections exist on subsets of the cohort.

Access to data requires approval, details provided: https://www.dnbc.dk/access-to-dnbc-data. DNBC data are part of the federated analysis platform in the EU Child Cohort Network.