The Exposome Paradigm in Environmental Health

Abstract

Connectivity introduces a new exposome based paradigm in environmental health. This denotes an approach that builds on the exploration of the interconnections between the co-existence of multiple exogenous and endogenous stressors and the different scales of biological organization. Coupling the two results in the final adverse health effect. This differs from the conventional paradigm, which seeks to shed light on the identification of singular cause-effect relationships between stressors and health outcomes. It creates a new way of combining health-relevant information coming from different disciplines, treating all factors affecting internal and external exposome are as covariates. Their functional integration into results in understanding the complex interaction between genome and exposome. The applicability of the exposome (and more specifically the connectivity) approach towards a better understanding of the exposure, sociodemographic and biological factors interplay in the association between environment and disease, is demonstrated in two different case studies.