The Exposome and Child Neurodevelopment
A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Health".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (22 March 2023) | Viewed by 2184
Special Issue Editors
Interests: epidemiology; public health; neuroimaging; child development
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Although heritability plays a crucial role in human health, the environment we are exposed to in daily life explains most of the disease pathology via directly disturbing physiological functioning or posing deleterious effects on gene replication and expression. All the environmental drivers of health and disease, such as food, exogenous chemicals, psychosocial stress social interactions, and lifestyle choices, can be summarized as the exposome, a concept proposed by C. P. Wild in 2005. Exposome science aims to systematically assess which and in what circumstances non-genetic factors affect our health.
Fetal life and childhood are critical periods for human neurodevelopment because of the substantial synthesis, growth and differentiation of neurons, which are inevitably influenced by the surrounding in which an individual grows up. A large body of research has related various environmental exposures in fetal life or childhood to brain and neuropsychiatric outcomes, but investigations on individual factors often fail to address the complexity of coexisting exposures and their interactions.
This Special Issue will profile research applying an exposome approach to investigate the etiology of child neurodevelopment. We encourage submissions from around the globe, with special interest in large-scale epidemiological studies examining environmental factors of multiple dimensions (and their interactions) and neurodevelopment of children (<18 years), including any brain, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral outcomes. Interventions or longitudinal studies will be a bonus but not a must.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Emerging chemicals of concern with potential health hazards
- Assessments of multiple exposome domains: physical-chemical, social, lifestyle
- Novel assays of (external and internal) exposome markers
- Advanced statistical methods to address multiple exposures, such as using Exposome Risk Scores (ERS)
- Interactions between exposures or effect modification of exposure-neurodevelopment associations by factors such as social economic status
- Combining biomarkers and functional measures of neurodevelopment
- Repeated measurements to unravel mechanisms of action (e.g., cumulative effect vs. critical window).
Dr. Runyu Zou
Dr. Virissa Lenters
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- exposome
- health hazards
- environmental exposures
- brain and neuropsychiatric outcomes
