Abstract
Human health and well-being are intricately linked to environmental quality. Environmental exposures can have lifelong consequences. In particular, exposures during the vulnerable fetal or early development period can affect structure, physiology and metabolism, causing potential adverse, often permanent, health effects at any point in life. External exposures, such as the “chemical exposome” (exposures to environmental chemicals), affect the host’s metabolism and immune system, which, in turn, mediate the risk of various diseases. Linking such exposures to adverse outcomes, via intermediate phenotypes such as the metabolome, is one of the central themes of exposome research. Much progress has been made in this line of research, including addressing some key challenges such as analytical coverage of the exposome and metabolome, as well as the integration of heterogeneous, multi-omics data. There is strong evidence that chemical exposures have a marked impact on the metabolome, associating with specific disease risks. Herein, we review recent progress in the field of exposome research as related to human health as well as selected metabolic and autoimmune diseases, with specific emphasis on the impacts of chemical exposures on the host metabolome.
Highlights
It is currently widely recognized that combinations of environmental factors, interacting further with genetic factors, play crucial roles in human health and disease
These procedures have been developed for various environmental samples and for metabolomics [58,59,60], they have rarely been applied in exposome analysis to date
There are several reports on the impact of polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) exposure during fetal development and early life on the health outcome of children, with PFAS exposure being associated with cardiometabolic risk factors including reduced birth weight, reduced birth length, and increased adiposity. The results of such studies have been inconsistent [139,142,160,161]. Whilst many of these risk factors have been associated with alterations in the metabolome, it is still not clear whether the effects of PFAS on health endpoints are mediated by metabolic disturbances
Summary
It is currently widely recognized that combinations of environmental factors, interacting further with genetic factors, play crucial roles in human health and disease. The exposome concept includes lifetime exposure, combining exogenous chemicals with genetic and other external factors that generate further molecular products inside the body and thereby may present threats to human health [1,4,5,6]. In this context, environmental factors comprise the full suite of general external, specific external and internal exposures [7,8]. We review recent progress in the field of exposome research as related to human health and selected metabolic and autoimmune diseases, with specific emphasis on the impacts of the “chemical exposome” (exposures to environmental chemicals) on the host metabolome
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