“S-PRESTO” is a study by KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH), Singapore Institute for Clinical Science (SICS) of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the National University Health System (NUHS).

It was launched as Singapore’s first large-scale healthcare study, which will involve 1,000 local couples. The study will investigate the effects that nutrition, lifestyle, mental health, and other environmental factors may have before and during pregnancy on the eventual health and socio-emotional outcomes of the mother and baby.

S-PRESTO will recruit couples who are actively planning pregnancy. Information will be gathered from these couples from the time they plan to conceive through successful conception and up until their child is two years old. The aim is to define the critical development pathways and mechanisms that link maternal and perinatal health and nutrition to child development, with the longer term goal of developing more effective approaches to intervention and prevention of metabolic diseases and neurodevelopment disorders.

This research is supported by the Singapore National Research Foundation under its Translational and Clinical Research Flagship Programme and administered by the Singapore Ministry of Health’s National Medical Research Council.