Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Environ Health. 2013 Jan 23;12:8. doi: 10.1186/1476-069X-12-8.
Environmental exposures during pregnancy and early life may have adverse health effects. Single birth cohort studies often lack statistical power to tease out such effects reliably. To improve the use of existing data and to facilitate collaboration among these studies, an inventory of the environmental exposure and health data in these studies was made as part of the ENRIECO (Environmental Health Risks in European Birth Cohorts) project. The focus with regard to exposure was on outdoor air pollution, water contamination, allergens and biological organisms, metals, pesticides, smoking and second hand tobacco smoke (SHS), persistent organic pollutants (POPs), noise, radiation, and occupational exposures. The review lists methods and data on environmental exposures in 37 European birth cohort studies. Most data is currently available for smoking and SHS (N=37 cohorts), occupational exposures (N=33), outdoor air pollution, and allergens and microbial agents (N=27). Exposure modeling is increasingly used for long-term air pollution exposure assessment; biomonitoring is used for assessment of exposure to metals, POPs and other chemicals; and environmental monitoring for house dust mite exposure assessment. Collaborative analyses with data from several birth cohorts have already been performed successfully for outdoor air pollution, water contamination, allergens, biological contaminants, molds, POPs and SHS. Key success factors for collaborative analyses are common definitions of main exposure and health variables. Our review emphasizes that such common definitions need ideally be arrived at in the study design phase. However, careful comparison of methods used in existing studies also offers excellent opportunities for collaborative analyses. Investigators can use this review to evaluate the potential for future collaborative analyses with respect to data availability and methods used in the different cohorts and to identify potential partners for a specific research question.
孕期和生命早期的环境暴露可能对健康产生不良影响。单出生队列研究通常缺乏可靠地梳理这些影响的统计能力。为了更好地利用现有数据并促进这些研究之间的合作，作为 ENRIECO（欧洲出生队列中的环境健康风险）项目的一部分，对这些研究中的环境暴露和健康数据进行了清查。暴露重点是室外空气污染、水污染、过敏原和生物有机体、金属、农药、吸烟和二手烟（SHS）、持久性有机污染物（POPs）、噪声、辐射和职业暴露。该综述列出了 37 个欧洲出生队列研究中环境暴露的方法和数据。目前，大多数数据可用于吸烟和 SHS（N=37 个队列）、职业暴露（N=33）、室外空气污染以及过敏原和微生物制剂（N=27）。暴露建模越来越多地用于长期空气污染暴露评估；生物监测用于评估金属、POPs 和其他化学物质的暴露；环境监测用于评估屋尘螨暴露。已经成功地对多个出生队列的数据进行了关于室外空气污染物、水污染、过敏原、生物污染物、霉菌、POPs 和 SHS 的合作分析。合作分析的关键成功因素是主要暴露和健康变量的共同定义。我们的综述强调，这种共同定义理想情况下应在研究设计阶段达成。然而，仔细比较现有研究中使用的方法也为合作分析提供了极好的机会。研究人员可以使用本综述评估不同队列中数据可用性和方法对未来合作分析的潜力，并确定特定研究问题的潜在合作伙伴。
