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Martine Vrijheid - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Applying the Exposome concept in birth cohort research: a review of statistical approaches
European Journal of Epidemiology, 2020Co-Authors: Susana Santos, Xavier Basagaña, Lydiane Agier, Lea Maitre, Charline Warembourg, Lorenzo Richiardi, Martine VrijheidAbstract:The Exposome represents the totality of life course environmental exposures (including lifestyle and other non-genetic factors), from the prenatal period onwards. This holistic concept of exposure provides a new framework to advance the understanding of complex and multifactorial diseases. Prospective pregnancy and birth cohort studies provide a unique opportunity for Exposome research as they are able to capture, from prenatal life onwards, both the external (including lifestyle, chemical, social and wider community-level exposures) and the internal (including inflammation, metabolism, epigenetics, and gut microbiota) domains of the Exposome. In this paper, we describe the steps required for applying an Exposome approach, describe the main strengths and limitations of different statistical approaches and discuss their challenges, with the aim to provide guidance for methodological choices in the analysis of Exposome data in birth cohort studies. An Exposome approach implies selecting, pre-processing, describing and analyzing a large set of exposures. Several statistical methods are currently available to assess Exposome-health associations, which differ in terms of research question that can be answered, of balance between sensitivity and false discovery proportion, and between computational complexity and simplicity (parsimony). Assessing the association between many exposures and health still raises many exposure assessment issues and statistical challenges. The Exposome favors a holistic approach of environmental influences on health, which is likely to allow a more complete understanding of disease etiology.
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Exposomics: The Exposome in Early Life
Health Impacts of Developmental Exposure to Environmental Chemicals, 2019Co-Authors: Lea Maitre, Martine VrijheidAbstract:Individuals are exposed to a wide range of environmental factors of different nature, social, physical, and chemical over their lifetime. The cumulative effect of these environmental stressors, their interaction with genetic factors and key susceptible developmental stages determines disease risks. The concept of the “Exposome”—representing all non-genetic exposures experienced during the life course—was a call to complement the impressive advances made in measuring the human genome with similar technology investment in measuring the environmental component of disease aetiology (Wild, Cancer Epidemiol Biomark Prev 14:1847–1850, 2005). While measuring the Exposome is recognized to be extremely challenging due to its dynamic, heterogeneous, and still unknown nature, advances in new and emerging technologies were seen as opportunities to characterize internal and external domains of the Exposome in a more holistic way. More than a decade after the Exposome concept was first proposed, several projects across Europe and the USA have started implementing at least part of it. This chapter will describe the utility of the Exposome concept, its characteristics, how it can be feasibly measured, and its first implementation in health studies, focusing on the early-life periods. Finally, the challenges and future perspectives of Exposome research will be presented.
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Comprehensive study of the Exposome and omic data using rExposome Bioconductor Packages.
Bioinformatics, 2019Co-Authors: Carles Hernandez-ferrer, Martine Vrijheid, Gregory A. Wellenius, Ibon Tamayo, Xavier Basagaña, Jordi Sunyer, Juan R. GonzálezAbstract:SUMMARY: Genomics has dramatically improved our understanding of the molecular origins of certain human diseases. Nonetheless, our health is also influenced by the cumulative impact of exposures experienced across the life course (termed 'Exposome'). The study of the high-dimensional Exposome offers a new paradigm for investigating environmental contributions to disease etiology. However, there is a lack of bioinformatics tools for managing, visualizing and analyzing the Exposome. The analysis data should include both association with health outcomes and integration with omic layers. We provide a generic framework called rExposome project, developed in the R/Bioconductor architecture that includes object-oriented classes and methods to leverage high-dimensional Exposome data in disease association studies including its integration with a variety of high-throughput data types. The usefulness of the package is illustrated by analyzing a real dataset including Exposome data, three health outcomes related to respiratory diseases and its integration with the transcriptome and methylome. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: rExposome project is available at https://isglobal-brge.github.io/rExposome/. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
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Influence of the Urban Exposome on Birth Weight
ISEE Conference Abstracts, 2018Co-Authors: Mark Nieuwenhuijsen, Martine Vrijheid, Lydiane Agier, Rémy SlamaAbstract:Background: We aimed to evaluate the association of the urban Exposome with birth weight and term low birth weight.Methods: We estimated exposure to the urban Exposome, including the built environm...
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Biomonitoring in the era of the Exposome
Environmental Health Perspectives, 2017Co-Authors: Kristine K. Dennis, Elizabeth Marder, David M. Balshaw, Yuxia Cui, Daniel T. Shaughnessy, Michael A. Lynes, Martine Vrijheid, Gary J Patti, Stephen M. Rappaport, Dana Boyd BarrAbstract:BACKGROUND The term "Exposome" was coined in 2005 to underscore the importance of the environment to human health and bring research efforts in line with those on the human genome. The ability to characterize environmental exposures through biomonitoring is key to Exposome research efforts. OBJECTIVES Our objective was to describe why traditional and non-traditional (exposomic) biomonitoring are both critical in studies aiming to capture the Exposome and make recommendations on how to transition exposure research toward exposomic approaches. We describe the biomonitoring needs of Exposome research and approaches and recommendations that will help fill the gaps in the current science. DISCUSSION Traditional and exposomic biomonitoring approaches have key advantages and disadvantages for assessing exposure. Exposomic approaches differ from traditional biomonitoring methods in that they can include all exposures of potential health significance, whether from endogenous or exogenous sources. Issues of sample availability and quality, identification of unknown analytes, capture of non-persistent chemicals, integration of methods and statistical assessment of increasingly complex datasets remain as challenges that must continue to be addressed. CONCLUSIONS To understand the complexity of exposures faced across the lifespan, traditional and nontraditional biomonitoring methods should both be used. Through hybrid approaches and integration of emerging techniques, biomonitoring strategies can be maximized in research to define the Exposome.
Lydiane Agier - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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using methylome data to inform Exposome health association studies an application to the identification of environmental drivers of child body mass index
Environment International, 2020Co-Authors: Solene Cadiou, Xavier Basagaña, Lydiane Agier, Mariona Bustamante, Sandra Andrusaityte, Angel Carracedo, Leda Chatzi, Regina GrazulevicieneAbstract:Abstract Background The Exposome is defined as encompassing all environmental exposures one undergoes from conception onwards. Challenges of the application of this concept to environmental-health association studies include a possibly high false-positive rate. Objectives We aimed to reduce the dimension of the Exposome using information from DNA methylation as a way to more efficiently characterize the relation between Exposome and child body mass index (BMI). Methods Among 1,173 mother–child pairs from HELIX cohort, 216 exposures (“whole Exposome”) were characterized. BMI and DNA methylation from immune cells of peripheral blood were assessed in children at age 6–10 years. A priori reduction of the methylome to preselect BMI-relevant CpGs was performed using biological pathways. We then implemented a tailored Meet-in-the-Middle approach to identify from these CpGs candidate mediators in the Exposome-BMI association, using univariate linear regression models corrected for multiple testing: this allowed to point out exposures most likely to be associated with BMI (“reduced Exposome”). Associations of this reduced Exposome with BMI were finally tested. The approach was compared to an agnostic Exposome-wide association study (ExWAS) ignoring the methylome. Results Among the 2284 preselected CpGs (0.6% of the assessed CpGs), 62 were associated with BMI. Four factors (3 postnatal and 1 prenatal) of the Exposome were associated with at least one of these CpGs, among which postnatal blood level of copper and PFOS were directly associated with BMI, with respectively positive and negative estimated effects. The agnostic ExWAS identified 18 additional postnatal exposures, including many persistent pollutants, generally unexpectedly associated with decreased BMI. Discussion Our approach incorporating a priori information identified fewer significant associations than an agnostic approach. We hypothesize that this smaller number corresponds to a higher specificity (and possibly lower sensitivity), compared to the agnostic approach. Indeed, the latter cannot distinguish causal relations from reverse causation, e.g. for persistent compounds stored in fat, whose circulating level is influenced by BMI.
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association between the pregnancy Exposome and fetal growth
International Journal of Epidemiology, 2020Co-Authors: Lydiane Agier, Xavier Basagaña, Carles Hernandezferrer, Lea Maitre, Ibon Tamayo Uria, Jose UrquizaAbstract:BACKGROUND: Several environmental contaminants were shown to possibly influence fetal growth, generally from single exposure family studies, which are prone to publication bias and confounding by co-exposures. The Exposome paradigm offers perspectives to avoid selective reporting of findings and to control for confounding by co-exposures. We aimed to characterize associations of fetal growth with the pregnancy chemical and external Exposomes. METHODS: Within the Human Early-Life Exposome project, 131 prenatal exposures were assessed using biomarkers and environmental models in 1287 mother-child pairs from six European cohorts. We investigated their associations with fetal growth using a deletion-substitution-addition (DSA) algorithm considering all exposures simultaneously, and an Exposome-wide association study (ExWAS) considering each exposure independently. We corrected for exposure measurement error and tested for exposure-exposure and sex-exposure interactions. RESULTS: The DSA model identified lead blood level, which was associated with a 97 g birth weight decrease for each doubling in lead concentration. No exposure passed the multiple testing-corrected significance threshold of ExWAS; without multiple testing correction, this model was in favour of negative associations of lead, fine particulate matter concentration and absorbance with birth weight, and of a positive sex-specific association of parabens with birth weight in boys. No two-way interaction between exposure variables was identified. CONCLUSIONS: This first large-scale Exposome study of fetal growth simultaneously considered >100 environmental exposures. Compared with single exposure studies, our approach allowed making all tests (usually reported in successive publications) explicit. Lead exposure is still a health concern in Europe and parabens health effects warrant further investigation.
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Applying the Exposome concept in birth cohort research: a review of statistical approaches
European Journal of Epidemiology, 2020Co-Authors: Susana Santos, Xavier Basagaña, Lydiane Agier, Lea Maitre, Charline Warembourg, Lorenzo Richiardi, Martine VrijheidAbstract:The Exposome represents the totality of life course environmental exposures (including lifestyle and other non-genetic factors), from the prenatal period onwards. This holistic concept of exposure provides a new framework to advance the understanding of complex and multifactorial diseases. Prospective pregnancy and birth cohort studies provide a unique opportunity for Exposome research as they are able to capture, from prenatal life onwards, both the external (including lifestyle, chemical, social and wider community-level exposures) and the internal (including inflammation, metabolism, epigenetics, and gut microbiota) domains of the Exposome. In this paper, we describe the steps required for applying an Exposome approach, describe the main strengths and limitations of different statistical approaches and discuss their challenges, with the aim to provide guidance for methodological choices in the analysis of Exposome data in birth cohort studies. An Exposome approach implies selecting, pre-processing, describing and analyzing a large set of exposures. Several statistical methods are currently available to assess Exposome-health associations, which differ in terms of research question that can be answered, of balance between sensitivity and false discovery proportion, and between computational complexity and simplicity (parsimony). Assessing the association between many exposures and health still raises many exposure assessment issues and statistical challenges. The Exposome favors a holistic approach of environmental influences on health, which is likely to allow a more complete understanding of disease etiology.
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the early life Exposome description and patterns in six european countries
Environment International, 2019Co-Authors: Ibon Tamayouria, Lea Maitre, Leda Chatzi, Valérie Siroux, Cathrine Thomsen, Mark J Nieuwenhuijsen, Gunn Marit Aasvang, Lydiane AgierAbstract:Abstract Characterization of the “Exposome”, the set of all environmental factors that one is exposed to from conception onwards, has been advocated to better understand the role of environmental factors on chronic diseases. Here, we aimed to describe the early-life Exposome. Specifically, we focused on the correlations between multiple environmental exposures, their patterns and their variability across European regions and across time (pregnancy and childhood periods). We relied on the Human Early-Life Exposome (HELIX) project, in which 87 environmental exposures during pregnancy and 122 during the childhood period (grouped in 19 exposure groups) were assessed in 1301 pregnant mothers and their children at 6–11 years in 6 European birth cohorts. Some correlations between exposures in the same exposure group reached high values above 0.8. The median correlation within exposure groups was >0.3 for many exposure groups, reaching 0.69 for water disinfection by products in pregnancy and 0.67 for the meteorological group in childhood. Median correlations between different exposure groups rarely reached 0.3. Some correlations were driven by cohort-level associations (e.g. air pollution and chemicals). Ten principal components explained 45% and 39% of the total variance in the pregnancy and childhood Exposome, respectively, while 65 and 90 components were required to explain 95% of the Exposome variability. Correlations between maternal (pregnancy) and childhood exposures were high (>0.6) for most exposures modeled at the residential address (e.g. air pollution), but were much lower and even close to zero for some chemical exposures. In conclusion, the early life Exposome was high dimensional, meaning that it cannot easily be measured by or reduced to fewer components. Correlations between exposures from different exposure groups were much lower than within exposure groups, which have important implications for co-exposure confounding in multiple exposure studies. Also, we observed the early life Exposome to be variable over time and to vary by cohort, so measurements at one time point or one place will not capture its complexities.
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Influence of the Urban Exposome on Birth Weight
ISEE Conference Abstracts, 2018Co-Authors: Mark Nieuwenhuijsen, Martine Vrijheid, Lydiane Agier, Rémy SlamaAbstract:Background: We aimed to evaluate the association of the urban Exposome with birth weight and term low birth weight.Methods: We estimated exposure to the urban Exposome, including the built environm...
Xavier Basagaña - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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using methylome data to inform Exposome health association studies an application to the identification of environmental drivers of child body mass index
Environment International, 2020Co-Authors: Solene Cadiou, Xavier Basagaña, Lydiane Agier, Mariona Bustamante, Sandra Andrusaityte, Angel Carracedo, Leda Chatzi, Regina GrazulevicieneAbstract:Abstract Background The Exposome is defined as encompassing all environmental exposures one undergoes from conception onwards. Challenges of the application of this concept to environmental-health association studies include a possibly high false-positive rate. Objectives We aimed to reduce the dimension of the Exposome using information from DNA methylation as a way to more efficiently characterize the relation between Exposome and child body mass index (BMI). Methods Among 1,173 mother–child pairs from HELIX cohort, 216 exposures (“whole Exposome”) were characterized. BMI and DNA methylation from immune cells of peripheral blood were assessed in children at age 6–10 years. A priori reduction of the methylome to preselect BMI-relevant CpGs was performed using biological pathways. We then implemented a tailored Meet-in-the-Middle approach to identify from these CpGs candidate mediators in the Exposome-BMI association, using univariate linear regression models corrected for multiple testing: this allowed to point out exposures most likely to be associated with BMI (“reduced Exposome”). Associations of this reduced Exposome with BMI were finally tested. The approach was compared to an agnostic Exposome-wide association study (ExWAS) ignoring the methylome. Results Among the 2284 preselected CpGs (0.6% of the assessed CpGs), 62 were associated with BMI. Four factors (3 postnatal and 1 prenatal) of the Exposome were associated with at least one of these CpGs, among which postnatal blood level of copper and PFOS were directly associated with BMI, with respectively positive and negative estimated effects. The agnostic ExWAS identified 18 additional postnatal exposures, including many persistent pollutants, generally unexpectedly associated with decreased BMI. Discussion Our approach incorporating a priori information identified fewer significant associations than an agnostic approach. We hypothesize that this smaller number corresponds to a higher specificity (and possibly lower sensitivity), compared to the agnostic approach. Indeed, the latter cannot distinguish causal relations from reverse causation, e.g. for persistent compounds stored in fat, whose circulating level is influenced by BMI.
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association between the pregnancy Exposome and fetal growth
International Journal of Epidemiology, 2020Co-Authors: Lydiane Agier, Xavier Basagaña, Carles Hernandezferrer, Lea Maitre, Ibon Tamayo Uria, Jose UrquizaAbstract:BACKGROUND: Several environmental contaminants were shown to possibly influence fetal growth, generally from single exposure family studies, which are prone to publication bias and confounding by co-exposures. The Exposome paradigm offers perspectives to avoid selective reporting of findings and to control for confounding by co-exposures. We aimed to characterize associations of fetal growth with the pregnancy chemical and external Exposomes. METHODS: Within the Human Early-Life Exposome project, 131 prenatal exposures were assessed using biomarkers and environmental models in 1287 mother-child pairs from six European cohorts. We investigated their associations with fetal growth using a deletion-substitution-addition (DSA) algorithm considering all exposures simultaneously, and an Exposome-wide association study (ExWAS) considering each exposure independently. We corrected for exposure measurement error and tested for exposure-exposure and sex-exposure interactions. RESULTS: The DSA model identified lead blood level, which was associated with a 97 g birth weight decrease for each doubling in lead concentration. No exposure passed the multiple testing-corrected significance threshold of ExWAS; without multiple testing correction, this model was in favour of negative associations of lead, fine particulate matter concentration and absorbance with birth weight, and of a positive sex-specific association of parabens with birth weight in boys. No two-way interaction between exposure variables was identified. CONCLUSIONS: This first large-scale Exposome study of fetal growth simultaneously considered >100 environmental exposures. Compared with single exposure studies, our approach allowed making all tests (usually reported in successive publications) explicit. Lead exposure is still a health concern in Europe and parabens health effects warrant further investigation.
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Applying the Exposome concept in birth cohort research: a review of statistical approaches
European Journal of Epidemiology, 2020Co-Authors: Susana Santos, Xavier Basagaña, Lydiane Agier, Lea Maitre, Charline Warembourg, Lorenzo Richiardi, Martine VrijheidAbstract:The Exposome represents the totality of life course environmental exposures (including lifestyle and other non-genetic factors), from the prenatal period onwards. This holistic concept of exposure provides a new framework to advance the understanding of complex and multifactorial diseases. Prospective pregnancy and birth cohort studies provide a unique opportunity for Exposome research as they are able to capture, from prenatal life onwards, both the external (including lifestyle, chemical, social and wider community-level exposures) and the internal (including inflammation, metabolism, epigenetics, and gut microbiota) domains of the Exposome. In this paper, we describe the steps required for applying an Exposome approach, describe the main strengths and limitations of different statistical approaches and discuss their challenges, with the aim to provide guidance for methodological choices in the analysis of Exposome data in birth cohort studies. An Exposome approach implies selecting, pre-processing, describing and analyzing a large set of exposures. Several statistical methods are currently available to assess Exposome-health associations, which differ in terms of research question that can be answered, of balance between sensitivity and false discovery proportion, and between computational complexity and simplicity (parsimony). Assessing the association between many exposures and health still raises many exposure assessment issues and statistical challenges. The Exposome favors a holistic approach of environmental influences on health, which is likely to allow a more complete understanding of disease etiology.
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Comprehensive study of the Exposome and omic data using rExposome Bioconductor Packages.
Bioinformatics, 2019Co-Authors: Carles Hernandez-ferrer, Martine Vrijheid, Gregory A. Wellenius, Ibon Tamayo, Xavier Basagaña, Jordi Sunyer, Juan R. GonzálezAbstract:SUMMARY: Genomics has dramatically improved our understanding of the molecular origins of certain human diseases. Nonetheless, our health is also influenced by the cumulative impact of exposures experienced across the life course (termed 'Exposome'). The study of the high-dimensional Exposome offers a new paradigm for investigating environmental contributions to disease etiology. However, there is a lack of bioinformatics tools for managing, visualizing and analyzing the Exposome. The analysis data should include both association with health outcomes and integration with omic layers. We provide a generic framework called rExposome project, developed in the R/Bioconductor architecture that includes object-oriented classes and methods to leverage high-dimensional Exposome data in disease association studies including its integration with a variety of high-throughput data types. The usefulness of the package is illustrated by analyzing a real dataset including Exposome data, three health outcomes related to respiratory diseases and its integration with the transcriptome and methylome. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: rExposome project is available at https://isglobal-brge.github.io/rExposome/. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
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Association between the Early-Life Exposome and Birth Weight
ISEE Conference Abstracts, 2018Co-Authors: Lydiane Agier, Carles Hernandez-ferrer, Ibon Tamayo, Xavier Basagaña, Lea Maitre, Jose Urquiza, Sandra Andrusaityte, Leda Chatzi, Maribel Casas, Regina GrazulevicieneAbstract:Background: Several environmental contaminants have been identified as possibly influencing birth weight, mainly from single exposure studies. The Exposome paradigm offers perspectives to avoid sel...
Oliver Robinson - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Framing Fetal and Early Life Exposome Within Epidemiology
Unraveling the Exposome, 2018Co-Authors: Jessica E. Laine, Oliver RobinsonAbstract:The time periods that influence fetal and early life development are identified in this chapter as key windows of susceptibility to exposures and critical developmental stages of preconception, and the prenatal, perinatal, and postnatal periods. We highlight in this chapter these key developmental windows that characterize the fetal and early life Exposome, and present a review of studies that have identified fetal and early life external and internal domains of the Exposome. We also present a discussion of issues in Exposome study design, including choice of biological samples and statistical complexities, specific to the key developmental times of fetal and early life. While notable studies and consortia have been established to investigate the Exposome during the times of fetal development and early life, we argue that future Exposome research must expand to incorporate the preconception period, build upon the existing and large body of knowledge of reproductive and peri/pre-natal epidemiological methods and study design, and utilize methods of causal inference. Collectively, this will aid in strengthening both the internal and external validity of our studies, and in the identification of potential causal mechanisms underlying many preventable diseases. Such advancements will lead to better risk assessments and potential policy and medical interventions.
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early life Exposome and lung function in children from the helix cohort
European Respiratory Journal, 2018Co-Authors: Valérie Siroux, Oliver Robinson, Xavier Basagaña, Jordi Sunyer, Lydiane Agier, Jose Urquiza, Maribel Casas, Berit Granum, Bente Oftedal, Cathrine ThomsenAbstract:Background: The Exposome approach allows a holistic view of environmental exposures effects on human health by evaluating multiple exposures simultaneously. Objectives: To evaluate prenatal and postnatal exposures association with lung function in childhood in the large European Human Early-Life Exposome (HELIX) cohort. Methods: We relied on a cohort of 1,301 mother-child pairs for whom the internal (urinary and blood biomarkers and lifestyle characteristics) and external (built environment, air pollution, meteorological factors…) Exposome were assessed, totaling 442 exposures (174 prenatal and 268 postnatal). An agnostic environment-wide association study (EWAS) was applied for forced expiratory volume in 1 second in % predicted (FEV1 %), using linear regression models adjusted for confounders for each exposure. Results: The mean age of the children was 8.1 years. FEV1% was available for 1,033 (79.4%) children (mean(sd) = 98.8(13.2)). Without correcting for multiple testing in EWAS, FEV1 was statistically significantly decreased with 1) higher prenatal exposure to perfluorononanoate and perfluorooctanoate; 2) lower prenatal exposure to NO2 (trimester 3) and inverse distance to nearest road; 3) higher postnatal exposure to copper, ethyl-paraben, phthalates (sum of DEHP, MECCP, MEHHP, MEOHP, OXOMINP), house crowding and number of bus public transport mode stops around school, and 4) lower family affluence score. When correcting EWAS results for multiple testing or using variable selection models (DSA), no exposure was selected. Conclusion: This first Exposome study on lung function in children confirmed some previously reported associations (e.g. phthalates, PFASs). Funding: Helix (EU H2020 Grant 308333)
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a systematic comparison of linear regression based statistical methods to assess Exposome health associations
Environmental Health Perspectives, 2016Co-Authors: Lydiane Agier, Oliver Robinson, Xavier Basagaña, Lützen Portengen, Valérie Siroux, Marc Chadeauhyam, Lise Giorgisallemand, Jelle VlaanderenAbstract:BACKGROUND: The Exposome constitutes a promising framework to better understand the effect of environmental exposures on health by explicitly considering multiple testing and avoiding selective reporting. However, Exposome studies are challenged by the simultaneous consideration of many correlated exposures. OBJECTIVES: We compared the performances of linear regression-based statistical methods in assessing Exposome-health associations. METHODS: In a simulation study, we generated 237 exposure covariates with a realistic correlation structure, and a health outcome linearly related to 0 to 25 of these covariates. Statistical methods were compared primarily in terms of false discovery proportion (FDP) and sensitivity. RESULTS: On average over all simulation settings, the elastic net and sparse partial least-squares regression showed a sensitivity of 76% and a FDP of 44%; Graphical Unit Evolutionary Stochastic Search (GUESS) and the deletion/substitution/addition (DSA) algorithm a sensitivity of 80% and a FDP of 33%. The environment-wide association study (EWAS) underperformed these methods in terms of FDP (average FDP, 86%), despite a higher sensitivity. Performances decreased considerably when assuming an Exposome exposure matrix with high levels of correlation between covariates. CONCLUSIONS: Correlation between exposures is a challenge for Exposome research, and the statistical methods investigated in this study are limited in their ability to efficiently differentiate true predictors from correlated covariates in a realistic Exposome context. While GUESS and DSA provided a marginally better balance between sensitivity and FDP, they did not outperform the other multivariate methods across all scenarios and properties examined, and computational complexity and flexibility should also be considered when choosing between these methods.
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the pregnancy Exposome multiple environmental exposures in the inma sabadell birth cohort
Environmental Science & Technology, 2015Co-Authors: Oliver Robinson, Xavier Basagaña, Jordi Sunyer, Juan R. González, Lydiane Agier, Carles Hernandezferrer, Mark J Nieuwenhuijsen, Montserrat De Castro, Joan O Grimalt, Rémy SlamaAbstract:The “Exposome” is defined as “the totality of human environmental exposures from conception onward, complementing the genome” and its holistic approach may advance understanding of disease etiology. We aimed to describe the correlation structure of the Exposome during pregnancy to better understand the relationships between and within families of exposure and to develop analytical tools appropriate to Exposome data. Estimates on 81 environmental exposures of current health concern were obtained for 728 women enrolled in The INMA (INfancia y Medio Ambiente) birth cohort, in Sabadell, Spain, using biomonitoring, geospatial modeling, remote sensors, and questionnaires. Pair-wise Pearson’s and polychoric correlations were calculated and principal components were derived. The median absolute correlation across all exposures was 0.06 (5th–95th centiles, 0.01–0.54). There were strong levels of correlation within families of exposure (median = 0.45, 5th–95th centiles, 0.07–0.85). Nine exposures (11%) had a correl...
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A Systematic Comparison Of Regression-Based Statistical Methods To Assess The Exposome-Health Association
ISEE Conference Abstracts, 2015Co-Authors: Lydiane Agier, Oliver Robinson, Xavier Basagaña, Lützen Portengen, Marc Chadeau-hyam, Lise Giorgis-allemand, Valérie Siroux, Jelle Vlaanderen, Juan Ramòn Gonzàlez Ruiz, Mark NieuwenhuijsenAbstract:Introduction: The Exposome concept comprises the totality of environmental exposures from the prenatal period onwards. Studies of the Exposome-health associations are challenged by the simultaneous...
Rémy Slama - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Influence of the Urban Exposome on Birth Weight
ISEE Conference Abstracts, 2018Co-Authors: Mark Nieuwenhuijsen, Martine Vrijheid, Lydiane Agier, Rémy SlamaAbstract:Background: We aimed to evaluate the association of the urban Exposome with birth weight and term low birth weight.Methods: We estimated exposure to the urban Exposome, including the built environm...
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the Exposome concept a challenge and a potential driver for environmental health research
European Respiratory Review, 2016Co-Authors: Valérie Siroux, Lydiane Agier, Rémy SlamaAbstract:The Exposome concept was defined in 2005 as encompassing all environmental exposures from conception onwards, as a new strategy to evidence environmental disease risk factors. Although very appealing, the Exposome concept is challenging in many respects. In terms of assessment, several hundreds of time-varying exposures need to be considered, but increasing the number of exposures assessed should not be done at the cost of increased exposure misclassification. Accurately assessing the Exposome currently requires numerous measurements, which rely on different technologies; resulting in an expensive set of protocols. In the future, high-throughput ‘omics technologies may be a promising technique to integrate a wide range of exposures from a small numbers of biological matrices. Assessing the association between many exposures and health raises statistical challenges. Due to the correlation structure of the Exposome, existing statistical methods cannot fully and efficiently untangle the exposures truly affecting the health outcome from correlated exposures. Other statistical challenges relate to accounting for exposure misclassification or identifying synergistic effects between exposures. On-going Exposome projects are trying to overcome technical and statistical challenges. From a public health perspective, a better understanding of the environmental risk factors should open the way to improved prevention strategies.
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the pregnancy Exposome multiple environmental exposures in the inma sabadell birth cohort
Environmental Science & Technology, 2015Co-Authors: Oliver Robinson, Xavier Basagaña, Jordi Sunyer, Juan R. González, Lydiane Agier, Carles Hernandezferrer, Mark J Nieuwenhuijsen, Montserrat De Castro, Joan O Grimalt, Rémy SlamaAbstract:The “Exposome” is defined as “the totality of human environmental exposures from conception onward, complementing the genome” and its holistic approach may advance understanding of disease etiology. We aimed to describe the correlation structure of the Exposome during pregnancy to better understand the relationships between and within families of exposure and to develop analytical tools appropriate to Exposome data. Estimates on 81 environmental exposures of current health concern were obtained for 728 women enrolled in The INMA (INfancia y Medio Ambiente) birth cohort, in Sabadell, Spain, using biomonitoring, geospatial modeling, remote sensors, and questionnaires. Pair-wise Pearson’s and polychoric correlations were calculated and principal components were derived. The median absolute correlation across all exposures was 0.06 (5th–95th centiles, 0.01–0.54). There were strong levels of correlation within families of exposure (median = 0.45, 5th–95th centiles, 0.07–0.85). Nine exposures (11%) had a correl...
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The Pregnancy Exposome
ISEE Conference Abstracts, 2015Co-Authors: Oliver Robinson, Carles Hernandez-ferrer, Xavier Basagaña, Jordi Sunyer, Juan R. González, Lydiane Agier, Mark J Nieuwenhuijsen, Montserrat De Castro, Joan O Grimalt, Rémy SlamaAbstract:Introduction: The “Exposome” is defined as 'the totality of human environmental exposures from conception onwards, complementing the genome' and its holistic approach may advance understanding of d...
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some challenges of studies aiming to relate the Exposome to human health
Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 2015Co-Authors: Rémy Slama, Martine VrijheidAbstract:If we date the origins of molecular epidemiology (defined as the reliance on tools of molecular biology in epidemiology, in particular, but not only, to assess exposures) to the publication, in 1993, of the book carrying this title,1 then this research field could be considered as having now reached the age of adulthood. While this young adult has some achievements already and has developed real strengths and recognition, many challenges lie ahead. The article by Lenters et al 2 offers an opportunity to discuss one of the most promising challenges, namely, the one related to the application of the Exposome concept. The Exposome encompasses lifetime environmental exposures from the prenatal period onwards.3 Although sometimes limited to exposures that can be assessed through biomarkers (the ‘internal Exposome)’, the Exposome should consider all exposures regardless of their most relevant mode of assessment, including lifestyle factors and factors assessed through questionnaires, environmental measurements and models. Consequently, this notion extends beyond the borders of molecular epidemiology. A first embodiment of the Exposome concept is the literature on biomonitoring, which provides a description of the levels of biomarkers of exposures to as many as several hundred environmental contaminants in population samples from some areas of the world, as illustrated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) in the USA.4 This research vein can allow identifying patterns of co-varying exposures or behaviours, as is already carried out in dietary studies with the grouping of individuals sharing specific dietary patterns (eg, Mediterranean diet or fast-food type eating behaviours). It offers the perspective of identification of population subgroups simultaneously exposed to numerous adverse exposures, and of studying if these correlate with sociodemographic factors; to this extent, this research vein is connected to the issue of environmental equity,5 in which the focus is …
