Family-based case-control studies are popularly used to study the effect of genes and gene-environment interactions in the etiology of rare complex diseases. We consider methods for the analysis of such studies under the assumption that genetic susceptibility (G) and environmental exposures (E) are independently distributed of each other within families in the source population. Conditional log...

The environment plays a major role in human health, yet tools to study the health impacts of complex environmental exposures are lacking. In 2005, Christopher Wild introduced the concept of the exposome, which encompasses environmental exposures and concomitant biological responses throughout the life course. Exposome-based approaches have the potential to enable novel insights into numerous re...

Humans may be exposed via their environment to multiple chemicals as a consequence of human activities and use of synthetic products. Little knowledge is routinely generated on the hazards of these chemical mixtures. The metabolomic approach is widely used to identify metabolic pathways modified by diseases, drugs, or exposures to toxicants. This review, based on the state of the art of the cur...

BACKGROUND The term "exposome" was coined in 2005 to underscore the importance of the environment to human health and to bring research efforts in line with those on the human genome. The ability to characterize environmental exposures through biomonitoring is key to exposome research efforts. OBJECTIVES Our objectives were to describe why traditional and nontraditional (exposomic) biomonitor...

Generalized estimating equations (Liang and Zeger, 1986) is a widely used, moment-based procedure to estimate marginal regression parameters. However, a subtle and often overlooked point is that valid inference requires the mean for the response at time t to be expressed properly as a function of the complete past, present, and future values of any time-varying covariate. For example, with envi...

BACKGROUND The term "exposome" was originally coined in 2005 and defined as the totality of exposures throughout the lifetime. The exposome provides an excellent scientific framework for studying human health and disease. Recently, it has been suggested that how exposures affect our biology and how our bodies respond to such exposures should be part of the exposome. OBJECTIVES The authors des...

Psychological stressors are social and physical environmental circumstances that challenge the adaptive capabilities and resources of an organism. These circumstances represent an extremely wide and varied array of different situations that possess both common and specific psychological and physical attributes. The challenge for theory, research, and practice is to abstract and understand the s...

The value of a statistical life (VSL) is a critical driver of estimated benefits for federal policies designed to improve human health, safety, and environmental exposures. The vast majority of empirical evidence on the magnitude of the VSL arises from hedonic wage models that have been plagued by measurement error and omitted variables. This paper employs randomly assigned workplace safety ins...

Paediatric multiple sclerosis (MS) represents a particular MS subgroup with unique diagnostic challenges. Due to the narrow window of environmental exposures and clinical disease expression, children with MS may represent an important study population for gaining a better understanding of the pathogenesis of the disease. The International Paediatric MS Study Group (IPMSSG) was formulated to cla...

BACKGROUND Cyclophosphamide is one of the most commonly used chemotherapy drugs worldwide. Data concerning environmental contamination and biological exposure of pharmacy personnel to this and other chemotherapy drugs are limited. OBJECTIVES To determine whether pharmacy personnel involved in preparing and checking cyclophosphamide doses were more likely to have detectable levels of this drug...