The Human Early Life Exposome (HELIX) cohort was established to assess a wide range of environmental exposures (the exposome) during early life and study the effects of the early life exposome on child and adolescent health outcomes and molecular omics signatures. Here, we describe the second follow-up of the HELIX cohort during adolescence, including measurements available and population characteristics.

HELIX is a collaborative study across six established and ongoing population-based birth cohort studies in six European countries (France, Greece, Lithuania, Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom). The cohort includes 1663 mother-child pairs recruited during pregnancy from 2003 to 2009 and followed up during childhood at 6–12 years from 2013 to 2016. This update summarises the most recent follow-up during adolescence (12–18 years) which took place from 2020 to 2022 and included 864 participants.

HELIX data have been used extensively in more than 100 publications, specifically pioneering the implementation of exposome approaches to address questions around the occurrence and effects of multiple exposures to real-life pollutant mixtures. These findings have improved our understanding of how multiple exposures co-exist and which exposures are driving the early-life exposome. Further, HELIX data have been used in exposome-wide discovery analyses to examine child health outcomes and used high-throughput omics techniques to characterise the internal exposome.

Although no additional follow-up visits are currently planned, HELIX will remain an active exposome research resource for years to come. The cohort will leverage its comprehensive database and extensive biobank to investigate complex exposure-omics-health relationships and measure additional biological markers.

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between perceived social support and domestic violence with maternal postpartum stress in an Iranian context.

This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2023 in Tabriz, Iran.

A total of 349 mothers, 2–6 months post partum, who were living with a spouse and had no history of mental health disorders, were selected from municipal health centres using a cluster sampling method.

Data were collected using the Maternal Postpartum Stress Scale, the Perceived Social Support Questionnaire (Personal Resource Questionnaire-85 (PRQ-85)), and the Hurt, Insult, Threaten, Scream tool for domestic violence. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, bivariate tests (independent samples t-tests, one-way analysis of variance and Pearson’s correlation coefficient) and generalised linear model.

Maternal postpartum stress showed a significant negative correlation with perceived social support (r=–0.16, p=0.002) and a significant positive correlation with domestic violence (r=0.14, p=0.006) in the initial analysis. In the final adjusted general linear model with robust standard errors, perceived social support was significantly associated with lower stress (B=–0.1, p

This study reveals a complex web of associations where perceived social support, domestic violence, economic stability and the model of birth care are linked to maternal postpartum stress. These findings highlight the urgent need for systemic support structures that empower the family unit and prioritise the emotional health in the postpartum period.