CHARACTERIZATION OF EARLY LIFE EXPOSURE TO ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMICALS AND ITS IMPACTS ON HEALTH

The exposome is a complex study that includes both endogenous and exogenous markers related to different diseases as part of the research. Connecting both endogenous and exogenous markers can help explain many associations between environmental chemicals and metabolic profiles, which can be stressors for causing different diseases. This study investigates the impact of per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) exposure during pregnancy on lipid profiles and measures the concentrations in blood and also in infants cord blood at birth. In addition, we are interested in lipids and bile acids (BA) levels in blood and if these three groups of analytes of interest are associated with each other. The infant blood-based samples come from a Chinese cohort and the maternal samples are from a Finnish cohort. The samples were extracted for PFAS and BA and for lipid analysis. Statistical analysis was performed for both cohorts. The main interest was to investigate the interactions between the identified compounds. The results also include concentrations to show the variety of values measured. Type 2 diabetes (T2D) and non-alcoholic fatty-liver disease (NAFLD) are usually not acquired early in life. Our results show a strong positive correlation between PFASs and triglycerides (TGs), as well as strong correlation between PFASs and conjugated primary and secondary BA particularly in cord blood samples, which can indicate higher risk of developing T2D or NAFLD. In maternal samples, the interactions between PFASs, BAs and lipids were much lower and showed less significant correlation. This indicates that the impact of PFAS exposure is much stronger during fetal development than in adult life.