title: The exposome concept: a challenge and a potential driver for environmental health research.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: INSERM, IAB, Team of Environmental Epidemiology applied to Reproduction and Respiratory Health, Grenoble, France Université Grenoble Alpes, IAB, Team of Environmental Epidemiology applied to Reproduction and Respiratory Health, Grenoble, France CHU de Grenoble, IAB, Team of Environmental Epidemiology applied to Reproduction and Respiratory Health, Grenoble, France valerie.siroux@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr.
authors.forename: Valérie
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Siroux
authors.affiliation: INSERM, IAB, Team of Environmental Epidemiology applied to Reproduction and Respiratory Health, Grenoble, France Université Grenoble Alpes, IAB, Team of Environmental Epidemiology applied to Reproduction and Respiratory Health, Grenoble, France CHU de Grenoble, IAB, Team of Environmental Epidemiology applied to Reproduction and Respiratory Health, Grenoble, France.
authors.forename: Lydiane
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Agier
authors.affiliation: INSERM, IAB, Team of Environmental Epidemiology applied to Reproduction and Respiratory Health, Grenoble, France Université Grenoble Alpes, IAB, Team of Environmental Epidemiology applied to Reproduction and Respiratory Health, Grenoble, France CHU de Grenoble, IAB, Team of Environmental Epidemiology applied to Reproduction and Respiratory Health, Grenoble, France.
authors.forename: Rémy
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Slama
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000379:methods*; D019295:Computational Biology; D004198:Disease Susceptibility; D004781:Environmental Exposure / Q000009:adverse effects*; D004782:Environmental Health / Q000379:methods*; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D004785:Environmental Pollutants / Q000009:adverse effects*; D057166:High-Throughput Screening Assays; D006801:Humans; D008019:Life Style; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012307:Risk Factors; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D004785:Environmental Pollutants