U.S. health officials announced on Friday that the largest study of U.S. children ever performed will begin in January. The National Children's Study, as it is called, will follow 100,000 children across the United States from before birth through age 21 to identify genetic and environmental factors that contribute to health disorders and conditions of childhood and adulthood. The scientists will begin with North Carolina and New York.

The study aims to discover the incipient causes of topical health issues including asthma, birth defects, diabetes, heart disease and obesity just to name a few.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) said they hope to succeed in covering all the regions of the U.S.A. during the two decade period of the study. This means that it will probably be conducted at 105 locations throughout the nation and thus manage to get an accurate bird’s eye view on early-life influences that affect later development.

This is a very complex approach, as the study will not only examine hereditary and environmental factors, but genetic influences backed up by biological samples and even life conditions inside the homes of the mothers they’re studying. What the mothers eat while they are carrying their unborn child and what they feed them afterwards will be on top of the list as well. Their ambitious goals will even involve the materials used while building their homes.

Through this amazingly through study, if conducted well, we may find some crucial answers to most of our common but yet controversial health problems.

Officials said more than $200 million has been spent already and the study is expected to cost $3.2 billion.

Beginning in January, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, will recruit women from Duplin County, N.C., and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, will recruit in Queens County, N.Y. They will be followed by parts of California, Pennsylvania, Utah, South Dakota and Minnesota. The enrolment will probably be complete by the summer of 2009.

The ultimate goal is to find ways to lower the cost of health care. Six of the conditions that will be studied, obesity, injury, asthma, diabetes, schizophrenia and autism, cost the U.S. system $758 billion a year. "We anticipate that in the long term, what we learn from the study will result in a significant savings in the nation's health care costs," Dr. Duane Alexander, who heads the NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, told Reuters.

Data from the study could be available in two years time or so. For locations of the study, please follow this link: http://www.nationalchildrensstudy.gov. It was also announced that the study will involve people from all income and educational levels and from all racial groups.