Enrieco Environmental Health Risks in European Birth Cohorts

Country: EU Projects
Start Date:   1/3/2009         Duration: 24 months         Project Type: RTD
Contract Number: 226285
Organisation Type:  EC Project
Topics: 
Contaminated land-->Contaminants-->Others
Contaminated land-->Risk assessment-->Receptor: Human health
Diffuse pollution-->Contaminants-->Persistent Organic Pollutants
Project objectives:
The aim is to advance our knowledge on specific environment and health causal relationships in pregnancy and birth cohorts by providing support to exploitation 
of the wealth of data generated by past or ongoing studies funded by the EC and national programmes.
Project Summary:
There are many pregnancy and birth cohorts in Europe, with sample sizes ranging from a few hundreds to tens of thousands.  A number of them aim to examine environment 
and health relationships, but the sample sizes are often too small to lead to conclusive results on their own, or have led to inconsistent and sometimes opposite
results. Furthermore the environmental exposure assessment often is the weakest part in the studies as a result of lack of funding and expertise, and could
be improved. Nevertheless, these cohorts often contain high quality data in many areas such as outcomes and possible confounders and have a team of highly experienced
researchers working on them with great expertise and commitment. A number of the cohorts participate in one or more EC funded studies such as GA2LEN (biological
exposures and asthma and allergy), ESCAPE (air pollution and allergy asthma, infections, cognitive function and pregnancy outcomes), INUENDO (POPs and
reproductive health), HIWATE (water contaminants and still birth, congenital anomalies, birth weight, preterm delivery), HITEA (indoor exposures and
asthma and allergies) and NEWGENERIS (food contaminants and genotoxic risks) and provide a great resource to explore environmental exposure response relationships,
but lack at times coordination, expertise and funding to make the best and most efficient use of the available resources. In addition exposure-response data may be available but not easily accessible, are based on small numbers and should be combined or at least compared with
information from other studies. Furthermore, while a number of the cohorts have been following up children for many years, others have just started with follow
up of pregnant women/foetus and provide an excellent resource for future follow up into childhood to examine the existence of vulnerable periods during pregnancy
and childhood for a range of environmental pollutants. The exchange of information and experience between the older and newer cohorts is essential to formulate
new hypotheses and use the best methods, tools and study designs to test these hypotheses. The aims and objectives of the coordination project is to bring together cohorts with environment and health information, share resources, expertise and
experience in this area, extract environmental exposure response relationships, where available, and evaluate the information and build common databases
to explore environmental exposure response relationships, where possible and needed. Protocols will be developed for the evaluation and could be used for
other projects. Furthermore, the project will evaluate potential new uses of the cohorts such as new exposures and health outcomes, and make recommendations.
Achieved Objectives:

            
Product Descriptions:
The specific objectives are to:  
  
 Make inventories of birth cohorts, including  
  
health data   
exposure data   
biological samples   
environmental exposure response functions   
expertise   
access   
Assure quality and interoperability and validate exposure, health and exposure-response data  
  
extraction and rigorous evaluation of quality of the data, including developing protocols for to be able to do this   
evaluation of opportunities   
validation/testing studies (through case studies)   
Obtain data access, build databases, and conduct analysis including  
  
setting up protocols for data access, database building and analyses   
setting up protocols for exposure response analyses   
conducting specific analyses on exposure and health data to obtain exposure response functions (through case studies)   
conducting specific meta/pooled analyses to obtain exposure response functions (through case studies)   
Make recommendations for data collection in the future to improve environment-health linkages and information  
  
for data collection (exposure, health etc)   
for possible analyses (laboratory and statistical)   
for exchange of knowledge between (older and newer) cohorts   
Disseminate information through  
  
project website   
virtual network   
workshop(s)   
easy accessible info (e.g. for policy makers etc)   
database with exposure response functions 
            
Additional Information:

            
Project Resources:
Weblink:
http://www.creal.cat
Funding Programme(s): 
EC FP7: Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development.
Link to Organisations:
Submitted by: EUGRIS Team Professor Paul Bardos  Who does what?  17/02/2012 10:32:00