2025

"Research is the distance between an idea and its realization."
- David Sarnoff
Research

Long-term Consequences of being Born Low Birth Weight (LBW) at term: follow up of the DIVIDS birth Cohort at ages 12-16 years

Dr. Triloks’ research spans across public health, epidemiology, clinical outcomes, and nutrition-related health research. She has made invaluable contribution to interdisciplinary research areas like computational models for food and nutrition through integrating dietary and health data, child mortality risk prediction in low-resource settings, and studies on markers of chronic disease risk.

Her research has significantly advanced the understanding the early life origins of chronic disease, particularly through longitudinal cohort studies examining growth trajectories, risk markers and cardiovascular outcomes in Indian children born with low birth weight (LBW) at term.

This study proposes a follow-up of the DIVIDS birth cohort during early to mid-adolescence (12–16 years), a critical developmental phase characterized by rapid physiological, hormonal, and metabolic changes. This developmental window provides a unique opportunity to identify early cardiometabolic and functional alterations that may predispose individuals born LBW to future adult non-communicable diseases (NCDs).  By integrating anthropometric, metabolic, cardiovascular, and functional assessments, the study proposes a comprehensive, multidimensional approach to understand long-term health consequences of fetal growth restriction in Indian context. By systematically comparing adolescents born at term with LBW to age-matched peers born with normal birth weight, this study aims to generate robust evidence on how early life growth restriction influences adolescent health outcomes in the Indian context.The findings will be valuable for early identification of risk markers, developing targeted preventive strategies, generating policy-relevant data to guide maternal and child health interventions and strengthening the evidence supporting life-course and developmental origins of health and disease frameworks in India.

This project is made possible through funding by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, and is expected to be completed by April 2027. 

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