Urban exposome and asthma incidence from childhood to young adulthood

Research problem and specific questions Identifying the urban environment exposures related to asthma is the key to mitigate the disease burden of asthma in urban areas.

Previous studies typically only looked at one urban exposure at one time, which does not reflect the multi-dimensional exposure setting in the real world.

The proposed project aims to adopt the exposome-wide approach to address the question: ‘Is there a single urban environment exposure or a combination of several exposures significantly associated with the risk of asthma from childhood to young adulthood?’ and the molecular mechanism behind these associations.Data and method Data from the prospective birth cohort BAMSE (Children, Allergy, Environment, Stockholm, Epidemiology) will be used.

Asthma outcomes from childhood to young adult will be assessed based on questionnaire at specific follow-ups.

Urban external exposome including ambient air pollution, noise, built environment, temperature, socioeconomic status will be assessed. Internal exposome is represented by untargeted urine and serum metabolomics data.

Association between urban external exposome and incident asthma will be investigated using exposome-wide approach as well as cluster-based multi-exposure methods.

Meet-in-the-Middle approach will be applied to investigate the metabolites associated with both urban exposome and asthma.

Causal mediation analysis will be further applied based on these identified metabolomic features to link the urban exposome to asthma.Societal relevance and utilizationUnderstanding the relationship between urban exposome and asthma will not only provide insights into the asthma etiology, but also help identify disparities in urban environment.

The output of the proposed project may offer better understanding to the complex relationships of urban environment exposures and help addressing environmental inequality using a multifaceted approach, eventually improving health outcomes for all individuals living in urban areas.Plan for project realisation The analysis of the proposed project will be conducted by the applicant with the support from senior research colleagues and the BAMSE research group, including equipment and intellectual content.

The budget will be mainly used to cover the salary of the applicant.