Project description
Immunotoxic effects of perfluoroalkyl substances exposure in children
Perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) represent a class of persistent chemicals that are used in many products, including non-stick cookware and firefighting foam. They have been linked to adverse health outcomes, including immunotoxicity and reduced antibody response to COVID-19 vaccination. Funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the PFAS-ITOX project found a unique cohort of children with a range of PFAS exposures and detailed medical records to investigate the effect of prenatal and childhood PFAS exposures on health outcomes, including COVID-19 incidence. The study will follow a large cohort of children to find whether high PFAS exposures are associated with immunosuppression, in cases of common infections, and hypersensitivity, involving the incidence of asthma.
Objective
Exposures to perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), a class of persistent chemicals, have been linked to an array of adverse health outcomes including reduced antibody response to vaccination. The COVID-19 pandemic has focused attention on the serious implications of PFAS immunotoxicity. However, there is a lack of epidemiological studies on clinical immune outcomes (e.g. infections or asthma) in children, whose developing immune system is highly sensitive to chemical exposures. This proposal (PFAS-ITOX) addresses this research gap by leveraging a unique cohort of children with a wide range of PFAS exposures (background to highly exposed) and detailed medical records to investigate the potential immunotoxic effects of prenatal and childhood PFAS exposures on clinically relevant outcomes, including COVID-19 incidence.
It was discovered in 2013 that one of two municipal water supplies in Ronneby, Sweden was delivering water that was highly contaminated by PFASs from firefighting foam runoff at a nearby military airport. Earlier studies in Ronneby found that serum PFAS concentrations corresponded closely with residential address history, allowing residential history to be used as an accurate proxy for exposure. PFAS-ITOX uses this “natural experiment” to create a longitudinal cohort of children and evaluate whether high PFAS exposures are associated with clinical outcomes related to immunosuppression (e.g. counts of common childhood infections) and hypersensitivity (e.g. incidence of asthma). While existing studies of PFAS immunotoxicity rely on self-reported data or hospital admission records, I will use the Skåne Healthcare Register, unique to southern Sweden, to identify outcomes at all levels of care, including primary care where many immune outcomes are diagnosed. The proposal's results will inform future PFAS research, provide necessary evidence for risk assessments, and provide critical information to health practitioners caring for highly-exposed individuals.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine pneumology asthma
- humanities history and archaeology history
- medical and health sciences health sciences public health epidemiology pandemics
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2021-PF-01
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22100 Lund
Sweden
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