Hormesis (defined operationally as low-dose stimulation, high-dose inhibition) is often used to promote the notion that while high-level exposures to toxic chemicals could be detrimental to human health, low-level exposures would be beneficial. Some proponents claim hormesis is an adaptive, generalizable phenomenon and argue that the default assumption for risk assessments should be that toxic ...

BACKGROUND: Interest in the development of statistical methods for disease cluster detection has experienced rapid growth in recent years. Evaluations of statistical power provide important information for the selection of an appropriate statistical method in environmentally-related disease cluster investigations. Published power evaluations have not yet addressed the use of models for focused ...

In this issue of the Journal, two different articles present epidemiologic evidence supporting the hypotheses that environmental exposures to particulate air pollution or higher temperatures modestly increase the risk of preterm birth. In this commentary, the author discusses environmental epidemiologic methods through the lens of these two papers with respect to the causal question, measuremen...

Epidemiologic evidence linking birth weight and asthma is inconsistent. The authors examined the association between birth weight and asthma during childhood and adult life in twins. Using prospectively collected data on 21,588 like-sexed Swedish twins of known zygosity born in 1928-1952, they first conducted a cohort study to examine the risk of asthma in relation to birth weight. Next, they c...

BACKGROUND Analysis of interactions between genes and the environment with complex multifactorial human disease faces important challenges. Limitations of parametric-statistical methods for detection of gene effects that are dependent solely or partially on interactions with other genes or environmental exposures are key problems. The aim of the study was to investigate the use of multifactor d...

BACKGROUND This research develops methods for determining the effect of geocoding quality on relationships between environmental exposures and health. The likelihood of detecting an existing relationship - statistical power - between measures of environmental exposures and health depends not only on the strength of the relationship but also on the level of positional accuracy and completeness o...

BACKGROUND There are animal data that indicate that prenatal environmental exposures have sex-specific effects on subsequent generations. In humans, an increase in birthweight has been reported if the maternal grandmother had smoked in the pregnancy giving rise to the mother. Here we assess whether prenatal exposure of either parent to cigarette smoke has a sex-specific effect on the grandchild...

Material Supplemental http://genome.cshlp.org/content/suppl/2014/09/17/gr.176933.114.DC1.html P<P Published online September 23, 2014 in advance of the print journal. Manuscript Accepted manuscript is likely to differ from the final, published version. Peer-reviewed and accepted for publication but not copyedited or typeset; accepted License Commons Creative . http://creativecommons.org/license...

Environmental factors have long been known to influence immune responses. In particular, clinical studies about the association between migration and increased risk of atopy/asthma have provided important information on the role of migration associated large sets of environmental exposures in the development of allergic diseases. However, investigations about environmental effects on immune res...

The INMA (INfancia y Medio Ambiente [Environment and Childhood]) is a population-based cohort study in different Spanish cities, that focuses on prenatal environmental exposures and growth, development and health from early fetal life until childhood. The study focuses on five primary areas of research: (1) growth and physical development; (2) behavioural and cognitive development; (3) asthma a...