Abstract
Background:Evidences show that exposure to air pollution is associated with a number of adverse health outcomes.Household air pollution (HAP) from solid fuel burning is one of the most important risk factors, especially in developing countries. As part of the southwest region in China, Tibetan plateau is a pristine area with clean air quality, hence is an idea place to study the health effects of household air pollution.Method:This project addressed HAP and health issues in China by measuring personal exposure to PM2.5 (n=46) and kitchen area BC concentrations (n = 8), and conducting urine metabolic profiles collected from 46 Tibetans living in three villages with ultrahigh performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. Household energy use surveys (n=24) were conducted regarding demographics, cook stove usage, household fuel, cooking behaviors and life styles.Results:More than 4000 metabolites were obtained from the urine samples which were existing in each subject. In hierarchical cluster analysis, we found two principle hierarchies associated with two typical sub-populations. The metabolic profiling of these two sub-populations is correlated with villages, whereas no correlation with age and gender was found. When samples were grouped by villages, PCA analysis shows principal component one could explain close to 44% of the sample variations. Besides, around 400 unique metabolites were found in village 2.Conclusion: Urine sample analysis show that the two groups have distinctly different metabolic profiles, and this might be associated with different exposure environment. Analysis using factors such as fuels, stoves, activity that could possibly affect health effects will be conducted. Further analysis could be performed to study the association between HAP exposure and various health endpoints, with the metabolites in urine samples, such as PAHs, providing profiling for stratified analysis as well as for possible illustration of the health effects pathways.
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