The child health exposure analysis resource as a vehicle to measure environment in the environmental influences on child health outcomes program

Abstract

Purpose of review: Demonstrate the role of environment as a predictor of child health.

Recent findings: The children's health exposure analysis resource (CHEAR) assists the Environmental influences on child health outcomes (ECHO) program in understanding the time sensitive and dynamic nature of perinatal and childhood environment on developmental trajectories by providing a central infrastructure for the analysis of biological samples from the ECHO cohort awards. CHEAR will assist ECHO cohorts in defining the critical or sensitive period for effects associated with environmental exposures. Effective incorporation of these principles into multiple existing cohorts requires extensive multidisciplinary expertise, creativity, and flexibility. The pursuit of life course - informed research within the CHEAR/ECHO structure represents a shift in focus from single exposure inquiries to one that addresses multiple environmental risk factors linked through shared vulnerabilities. CHEAR provides ECHO both targeted analyses of inorganic and organic toxicants, nutrients, and social-stress markers and untargeted analyses to assess the exposome and discovery of exposure-outcome relationships.

Summary: Utilization of CHEAR as a single site for characterization of environmental exposures within the ECHO cohorts will not only support the investigation of the influence of environment on children's health but also support the harmonization of data across the disparate cohorts that comprise ECHO.

Figure 1. Organization of Environmental Indicators

Known and unknown toxicants interact with nutrition and social stressors to elicit a biological response via multiple physiologic pathways. This response depends on the life stage at which exposure occurs. The Targeted Resource will provide validated markers of exposure to known toxicants, nutrients, and stress markers. The Untargeted Resource will undertake exposomic analyses to assess a wide range of unknown chemical signatures that include environmental chemicals, their breakdown products, and biomolecular signatures of disrupted cellular function.

Figure 2

Schematic of various inputs into the ECHO cohorts. CHEAR’s role is to provide biomarker measures of environmental exposure through both targeted and untargeted.