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Article History

Received: 20 June 2018

Accepted: 31 August 2018

First Online: 10 September 2018

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: Research based on patient-related data and human DNA is strictly regulated by German law. The collection of detailed personal data, combined with the sampling of biomaterials, demands strict confidentiality. Our study complies with international guidelines of ethical research based on the Declaration of Helsinki. The study design was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of the Board of Physicians Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania at the University of Greifswald (Reg.-Nr. III UV 20/00). Eligible women were asked for written informed consent; in cases of legally minor mothers, i.e., aged < 18 years, the additional signatures of the newborn’s and legally minor mother’s legal caregivers were required. The enrolment procedure was described in details by Ebner and colleagues []. The written informed consent form included data assessment in face-to-face interviews, self-administered questionnaires and patient records. It also covered biosamples of blood. Furthermore, informed consent covered the storage of pseudonymized data as well as their analyses and publication.The current study is a part of a population-based birth cohort `Survey of Neonates in Pomerania´ (SNiP) examining the health and socioeconomic information from 5801 mothers and their children. SNiP was designed as a multi-purpose birth cohort to serve as a platform for studies of pregnancy complications, maternal and child health from pregnancy through to adulthood after completion of follow up. Therefore, all analyses from this database have to be regarded as secondary analyses.

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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