The combined effect of environmental exposures and unhealthy lifestyle habits can affect children's cardiometabolic health in a way that exceeds their separate effects. A new study from the University of Eastern Finland shows the benefit of measuring the combined effect of multiple environmental and lifestyle factors. An exposome score measuring a combination of environmental and lifestyle exposures was associated with a large number of serum metabolites linked to cardiometabolic health, with a number of these metabolites uniquely associated with the exposome score.
The study involved 504 children aged 6-9 years who were followed up for eight years in the ongoing Physical Activity and Nutrition in Children (PANIC) Study in the city of Kuopio, Finland. The results were published in Communications Biology . To the best of our knowledge, this is the first longitudinal study to investigate the association between an exposome score and metabolic health across childhood and adolescence.
" Darren Healy, first author of the study, doctoral researcher The word "exposome" refers to environmental factors, including lifestyle, that people are exposed to throughout their life course. In the present study, part of the EU-funded LongITools project, the exposome score was comprised of categories related to diet, physical activity, sleep, air pollution, and parental socioeconomic status. Earlier research has shown that pathophysiological processes related to the development of cardiometabolic .