BACKGROUND The Sri Lankan twin registry is one of the first to be established in a developing country, and its design has ensured sampling from a wide range of environmental conditions. It thus has great potential to examine environmental and genetic influences on diverse phenotypes, including psychiatric disorders, in the context of a diversity of environmental exposures, which may not have be...

BACKGROUND Observational epidemiology has been instrumental in identifying modifiable causes of common diseases, and, in turn, substantially impacting public health. Spurious associations in observational epidemiologic studies are most commonly caused by confounding due to social, behavioral, or environmental factors and can therefore be difficult to control. They may also be due to reverse cau...

In this article, we discuss the relationship between environmental exposures within the school environment and pediatric asthma morbidity. This article will conclude by reviewing novel school based asthma education and therapeutic programs and environmental interventions designed to help mitigate pediatric asthma morbidity.

BACKGROUND This paper provides an introduction for environmental health scientists to emerging population-based rodent resources. Mouse reference populations provide an opportunity to model environmental exposures and gene-environment interactions in human disease and to inform human health risk assessment. OBJECTIVES This review will describe several mouse populations for toxicity assessment...

Inner-city residents continue to suffer disproportionate asthma morbidity despite recent progress in reducing asthma morbidity and mortality in other strata of the United States population. Studies over the past decade indicate that the indoor environment is a strong contributor to poor asthma control and asthma-related health care use in inner-city populations. Certain indoor exposures are mor...

Public transit systems are ideal for studying the urban microbiome and interindividual community transfer. In this study, we used 16S amplicon and shotgun metagenomic sequencing to profile microbial communities on multiple transit surfaces across train lines and stations in the Boston metropolitan transit system. The greatest determinant of microbial community structure was the transit surface ...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW In countries with comparable levels of development and healthcare systems, preterm birth rates vary markedly--a range from 5 to 10% among live births in Europe. This review seeks to identify the most likely sources of heterogeneity in preterm birth rates, which could explain differences between European countries. RECENT FINDINGS Multiple risk factors impact on preterm birth...

BACKGROUND Time-series analyses have been used for decades to investigate time-varying environmental exposures. Recently, the case-crossover design has been applied to assess acute effects of air pollution. Our objective was to compare time-series and case-crossover analyses using varying referent periods (ie, unidirectional, ambidirectional, and time-stratified). METHODS We examined the asso...

BACKGROUND Biomarkers are considered the method of choice for determining exposure to environmental contaminants and relating such exposures to health outcomes. However, the association between many biomarkers and outcome is not direct because of variability in sensitivity and susceptibility in the individual. OBJECTIVES We explore the relationship between environmental exposures and health o...

BACKGROUND Environmental factors during childhood are thought to play a role in the aetiology of Crohn's Disease (CD). In South Africa, recently published work based on an investigation of 14 childhood environmental exposures during 3 age intervals (0-5, 6-10 and 11-18 years) has provided insight into the role of timing of exposure in the future development of CD. The 'overlapping' contribution...