Exposome

The Exposome section welcomes manuscripts of all types related to the development of the concept of the exposome, i.e., the totality of exposures, regardless of their origin (external or internal to the body) or nature (chemical, physical, or biological agents; psychological stress; social environment; etc.), suffered by individuals throughout their life starting from gestation, and its applications for the improved understanding of the etiology of human disease.

The complexity of highly correlated exposures or co-exposures that are often present in high-dimensional datasets of population health warrants the use of specialized study designs and advanced algorithms for statistical analyses. Environment-wide association studies (EWAS) and their exposomic tools represent novel approaches to tackle societal challenges in environmental health, toxicology, and precision medicine. The modulation by chemical and other types of exposure of individual susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 represents a timely example worthy of studying under the umbrella of the exposome to better understand the multifactorial nature of disease aetiology and control. Various omics platforms find use in exposome research to elucidate the endogenous response to external stimuli and stressors at various life stages and (sub)population groups. Exposomic tools may often find use in addressing disease susceptibility risk attributed to a suite of environmental variables and/or their groups. Exposome–genome interactions are equally important to address in efforts that attempt to predict disease phenotype characteristics.

In this Section of Toxics, we invite manuscripts reporting advances in, among other topics, exposure assessment (especially in relation to the characterization of multiple exposures), the use of omics in the context of environmental health studies, and statistical methodologies for analyzing and integrating the effects on health of multiple exposures at different life stages, as well as related review and opinion articles.