Exposome in human health: Utopia or wonderland?

Mingliang Fang; Ligang Hu; Da Chen; Yuming Guo; Jianmeng Liu; Changxin Lan; Jicheng Gong; Bin Wang

doi:10.1016/j.xinn.2021.100172

Exposome in human health: Utopia or wonderland?

Innovation (Camb). 2021 Oct 6;2(4):100172. doi: 10.1016/j.xinn.2021.100172. eCollection 2021 Nov 28.

Authors

Mingliang Fang¹, Ligang Hu², Da Chen³, Yuming Guo⁴, Jianmeng Liu^{5

6}, Changxin Lan^{5

6}, Jicheng Gong⁷, Bin Wang^{5

6}

Affiliations

¹ School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore.
² State Key Laboratory of Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China.
³ School of Environment, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Environmental Pollution and Health, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, China.
⁴ Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
⁵ Institute of Reproductive and Child Health, Peking University/Key Laboratory of Reproductive Health, National Health Commission of the People's Republic of China, Beijing 100191, China.
⁶ Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Peking University, Beijing 100191, China.
⁷ State Key Joint Laboratory for Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control, College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering and Center for Environment and Health, Peking University, Beijing 100000, China.

Abstract

The current human exposome primarily emphasizes the total environmental exposure during an entire life. The characteristics of "lifelong" and "all environmental factors" make it very challenging to bring the exposomic study into real-life applications. Herein, we mainly discuss the typical application scenarios of exposomics and how to conduct an exposomic study to establish relationships between the exposome and human health. To increase the feasibility and efficiency, we propose that (1) an exposomic study can start with health events during critical-window periods; (2) both data- and hypothesis-driven exposomics should be combined to prioritize the risk of environmental factors; and (3) reliable statistical analysis of high-dimensional data of external and internal exposure factors are urgently needed. With standardization of the exposomic study, it will be critical to build a "wonderland" for human health.

Keywords: critical window; exposome; exposomics; health risk assessment; human health.

Publication types

Review