An informative study conducted by researchers at the
University of Cincinnati, in collaboration with peers at
Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, has demonstrated a link between traffic pollution levels where children are born and their likelihood of developing asthma.
The study, the first of its kind, was published in the February 16, 2009 issue of
PLoS ONE. It details evidence of a possibly new biomarker, associated with parental exposure to a byproduct of the incomplete combustion of carbon-based fuels, present in blood taken from 56 umbilical cord samples of children born in Northern Manhattan and the South Bronx sections of New York City.
This harmful byproduct, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), has been connected to childhood asthma and cancer.
Researchers hypothesize that this indirect exposure to traffic pollution could reach unborn children, even in the womb, by "reprogramming" fetal genes and inflaming the child's airways.
"Our data support the concept that environmental exposures can interact with genes during key developmental periods to trigger disease onset later in life, and that tissues are being reprogrammed to become abnormal later," says Shuk-mei Ho, PhD, senior author of the paper, chair of
UC’s Department of Environmental Health and director of the
Center for Environmental Genetics.
This research offers the hope of predicting the presence of asthma in children, based on environment.
"This research is aimed at detecting early signs of asthma risk so that we can better prevent this chronic disease that affects as many as 25 percent of children in Northern Manhattan and elsewhere," says Frederica Perera, DrPH, co-first author of the paper, professor of environmental health sciences and director of the
Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health at the Mailman School of Public Health.
Ultimately, this study has implications for the study of conditions beyond childhood asthma.
"This study provides a blueprint for the discovery of epigenetic biomarkers relevant to other investigations of exposure-disease relationships in birth cohorts," says Wan-yee Tang, PhD, a UC research scientist and a co-first author on the paper.
This research is a continuation of a study launched in 1998 to explore the effects of inner-city pollution on the health of mothers and their children and is funded by the
National Institute of Environmental Health, the
US Environmental Protection Agency and other private foundations.
Writer: Jonathan DeHart
Source: University of Cincinnati
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