• 17 de mayo de 2024

Artículo de interés - Cohort Profile: Barcelona Life Study Cohort (BiSC)

Payam Dadvand, Mireia Gascon, Mariona Bustamante, Ioar Rivas, Maria Foraster, Xavier Basagaña, Marta Cosín, Elisenda Eixarch, Muriel Ferrer, Eduard Gratacós, Laura Gómez Herrera, Pol Jimenez-Arenas, Jordi Júlvez, Àlex Morillas, Mark J Nieuwenhuijsen, Cecília Persavento, Jesús Pujol, Xavier Querol, Olga Sánchez García, Martine Vrijheid, Elisa Llurba, María Dolores Gómez-Roig, Jordi Sunyer, BiSC Group

Int J Epidemiol. 2024 Apr 11;53(3):dyae06

Nuevo artículo de interés para la RICORS-SAMID

Extracto

Why was the cohort set up?

Early life, including prenatal and early postnatal periods, is a window of vulnerability to the effects of socio-environmental factors.1 According to the Developmental Origins of Health and Diseases (DOHaD) concept, the impact of exposures during this period is not limited to pregnancy and childhood outcomes and can spill over into adulthood and the elderly.2,3 DOHaD postulates that exposures during early life could permanently alter the metabolism, physiology, and structure of the human body and such alteration can eventually promote health or, on the contrary, induce disease long after the environmental exposure has ceased.3 In parallel with recent advances in the understanding of DOHaD, there has been a growing interest in characterizing the ‘early-life exposome’. The ‘exposome’, defined as the totality of human environmental exposures from conception onwards,4 provides a framework to holistically evaluate the environmental determinants of health and disease to account for the complexity of exposure to interrelated environmental factors in real life. Birth cohorts have been instrumental in generating knowledge regarding different aspects of DOHaD and more recently in characterizing the early-life exposome.5,6 The advancements in tools and methods to characterise the exposome (e.g. personal sensors and monitors, novel biomarkers of exposure, high-resolution analytical chemistry methods to characterize omics in biological samples, etc) and also health outcomes (e.g. ultrasound techniques, neuroimaging methods, computerized tests, biomarkers of early health effects, etc) have provided an unprecedented opportunity to establish a new generation of exposome birth cohorts. Capitalizing on these advancements, the Barcelona Life Study Cohort (BiSC) aims to comprehensively evaluate the socio-environmental as well as genetic determinants (i) of foetal and child health, growth, and development towards adult life through a DOHaD perspective and (ii) of maternal mental and physical health and wellbeing during pregnancy and afterwards, while shedding light on the underlying mechanisms. BiSC was initially founded through merging two projects: (i) Prenatal Exposure to Urban AIR Pollution and Pre- and Postnatal Brain Development (AIR-NB), funded by a European Research Council (ERC)-Advanced Grant (grant no. 785994) and (ii) Traffic-related air pollution and birth weight: the roles of noise, placental function, green space, physical activity, and socioeconomic status (FRONTIER), funded by the Health Effects Institute (grant no. 4959-RFA17-1/18–1-5). The merger of the two projects occurred before setting up the BiSC and a common protocol based on requirements of the two projects were developed to establish the cohort. Afterwards, it has been further funded through other projects as listed in the Funding section below.

PMID: 38725298