From: EXPOsOMICS: final policy workshop and stakeholder consultation
Research Question | Main Outputs |
---|---|
(1) Is it possible to refine exposure assessment to air pollution and water contaminants using a combination of personal exposure monitoring and omic technologies? | -Detailed 24 h PEMs for PM2.5 and UFP conducted on 200 participants -LUR models for PM2.5 and NO2 developed for Western Europe -LUR models for UFP and oxidative potential of PM2.5 developed in six European areas -Short-term exposure to air pollutants induced changes in omic profiles, including gene expression, metabolites, and immune markers -A expanded range of DBPs in air, water and/or in biological samples such as exhaled breath and urine were measured/modeled -Numerous metabolic and transcriptional changes due to swimming in a chlorinated pool |
(2) Will that refinement lead to more accurate estimates of the association with selected diseases, by reducing measurement error? | -Increased RRs for total mortality and ischemic heart disease and asthma incidence using PM2.5 deattenuation factors from the PEM study -Positive association between high levels of brominated THM exposure and colorectal cancer risk |
(3) Do new approaches allow the investigation of the effects of mixtures in addition to single components? | -Lack of overlap between omics signals for different air pollutants (may suggest the ability of omics to detect pollutant-specific biological effects) |
(4) Do they improve the investigation of dose-response relationships? | -Omics signals occurred at very low levels of exposure and following short-term exposure |
(5) Is it possible to strengthen causal reasoning by using the “meet-in-the-middle” concept, i.e. investigate the temporal sequence of exposure, biological pathway perturbation and disease onset? | -Metabolomics was used to study meet-in-the-middle pathways linking air pollution to adult-onset asthma with observed evidence of the involvement of both linoleate metabolism and carnitine pathways lending causal credibility to the association -Transcriptional and microRNA changes observed after swimming were linked to bladder and colon cancer risk from previous studies |
(6) Is it possible to use the exposome approach to study the life-course epidemiology of environmental diseases? | -Air pollution impacts on both asthma and cardiovascular disease via pro-inflammatory and oxidative stress pathways, consistent with accumulation of oxidative molecular damage over years of exposure - Known candidate transcriptome profiles of blood pressure/insulin in adulthood were associated with prenatal PM exposure at birth -Longitudinal air pollution exposures were associated with alterations in genes involved in neurotransmission and tumor suppression pathways |