Populations are often divided categorically into distinct racial/ethnic groups based on social rather than biological constructs. Genetic ancestry has been suggested as an alternative to this categorization. Herein, we typed over 450,000 CpG sites in whole blood of 573 individuals of diverse Hispanic origin who also had high-density genotype data. We found that both self-identified ethnicity an...

A biomarker is a measurable event occurring in a biological system, such as the human body. In environmental epidemiology, a biomarker represents a subclinical and reversible change; it is not a diagnostic test, but an indicator that an early change has occurred that could later lead to clinical disease. Although some biomarkers may belong to more than one class, they are often separated into b...

The label "sick building syndrome" is often used to imply the absence of a physiologic basis for symptoms in the built environment. Although building-related illness is widely recognized but considered rare, several well-studied mechanisms may be responsible for many symptoms in buildings. These mechanisms do not explain why some individuals perceive disability. Until researchers distinguish ph...

Traditionally, the fields of human genetics and epidemiology were independent disciplines with minimal interaction between them. Over the years, however, genetic concepts were slowly integrated with epidemiologic methods to capitalize on the advantages of thendiverse perspectives and expertise (1). By the late 1970s, genetic epidemiology emerged as a formal discipline and blossomed throughout t...

OBJECTIVES Our aim was to examine the associations between high BMI and changes in BMI status during the first 7 years of life and asthma and allergic sensitization at age 8 years. METHODS A birth cohort of newborn infants was followed for 8 years. Repeated parental questionnaires provided information on environmental exposures and health outcomes. Information on height and weight during chil...

Exposure to exercise or to environmental enrichment increases the generation of new neurons in the adult hippocampus and promotes certain kinds of learning and memory. While the precise role of neurogenesis in cognition has been debated intensely, comparatively few studies have addressed the mechanisms linking environmental exposures to cellular and behavioral outcomes. Here we show that bone m...

BACKGROUND High-throughput sequencing has led to increased insights into the human skin microbiome. Currently, the majority of skin microbiome investigations are limited to characterizing prokaryotic communities, and our understanding of the skin fungal community (mycobiome) is limited, more so for cohorts outside of the western hemisphere. Here, the skin mycobiome across healthy Chinese indivi...

The implications of hormesis for decision making about control of environmental exposures are examined. From an economic perspective, environmental exposures should be controlled to a level that optimizes health effects and minimizes control costs. The possibility that substances are, or may be, hormetic poses no fundamental challenge for economic analysis. In contrast with the linear no-thresh...

OBJECTIVE Immunoglobulin E (IgE) plays a key role in allergy disease pathogenesis, but little is known about the environmental factors associated with higher IgE levels in infants. The aim of this study was to determine the risk factors for elevated serum total IgE infants living in Havana. METHODS Eight hundred and seventy-seven infants provided blood samples. Data on allergic disease sympto...

Although automobile refueling represents the major source of benzene exposure among the nonsmoking public, few data are available regarding such exposures and the associated uptake of benzene. We repeatedly measured benzene exposure and uptake (via benzene in exhaled breath) among 39 self-service customers using self-administered monitoring, a technique rarely used to obtain measurements from t...