Socioeconomic Inequalities in the External Exposome in European Cohorts: The EXPANSE Project.

Socioeconomic inequalities in the exposome have been found to be complex and highly context-specific, but studies have not been conducted in large population-wide cohorts from multiple countries. This study aims to examine the external exposome, encompassing individual and environmental factors influencing health over the life course, and to perform dimension reduction to derive interpretable characterization of the external exposome for multicountry epidemiological studies. Analyzing data from over 25 million individuals across seven European countries including 12 administrative and traditional cohorts, we utilized domain-specific principal component analysis (PCA) to define the external exposome, focusing on air pollution, the built environment, and air temperature. We conducted linear regression to estimate the association between individual- and area-level socioeconomic position and each domain of the external exposome. Consistent exposure patterns were observed within countries, indicating the representativeness of traditional cohorts for air pollution and the built environment. However, cohorts with limited geographical coverage and Southern European countries displayed lower temperature variability, especially in the cold season, compared to Northern European countries and cohorts including a wide range of urban and rural areas. The individual- and area-level socioeconomic determinants (i.e., education, income, and unemployment rate) of the urban exposome exhibited significant variability across the European region, with area-level indicators showing stronger associations than individual variables. While the PCA approach facilitated common interpretations of the external exposome for air pollution and the built environment, it was less effective for air temperature. The diverse socioeconomic determinants suggest regional variations in environmental health inequities, emphasizing the need for targeted interventions across European countries.

Inclusion of alternative marine by-products in aquafeeds with different levels of plant-based sources for on-growing gilthead sea bream (Sparus aurata, L.): effects on digestibility, amino acid retention, ammonia excretion and enzyme activity.

The search for new sustainable aquafeeds for the species with greater economic importance, such as the gilthead sea bream in Europe, is one of the main challenges in the aquaculture sector. The present work tested fishmeal replacement by a mixture of plant meals at different levels, as well as the use of marine by-products with attractant properties and high-quality protein in high plant protein diets. In order to do that, effects on growth and biometric parameters, digestibility, amino acid retention, excreted ammonia and proteases and amylase activity were assessed, using six different diets: FM100 (100% of protein provided by fishmeal), FM50 (50% of replacement), FM25 (75% of replacement) and FM0 (100% of replacement), but also FM25+ (75% of replacement and 15% of squid and krill meal inclusion), and FM0+ (100% of replacement and 15% of squid and krill meal inclusion). In group FM0, a clear impact of dietary changes was observed on growth, survival and ammonia excretion. Amino acid retention in group FM0+ was also significantly affected, which can be explained by the limited content of certain amino acids in this diet. On the other hand, no significant differences were observed in most biometric parameters or in enzyme activity. In conclusion, complete fishmeal replacement can be achieved by using a mixture of plant-based sources, but supplementation with complementary marine ingredients can prevent detrimental effects on growth, survival, nutritional parameters and protein metabolism.

Population structure, spatial aggregation, and sampling plan for the Texas citrus mite, Eutetranychus banksi (Acari: Tetranychidae) on citrus.

BACKGROUND: Eutetranychus banksi (McGregor) (Acari: Tetranychidae) is an invasive spider mite native to the Americas. In 2013 it invaded the main citrus-growing area in Spain producing significant damage and requiring chemical treatments. This work examines its population structure, spatial distribution and presents a sampling plan, which will assist in developing an integrated pest management (IPM) strategy. RESULTS: There were differences in the population structure on fruits and leaves, as well as between leaves from different flushes with fluctuations over time correlated with variations in sex ratio. No differences in aggregation at the different plant strata were found; however, immature stages showed a higher aggregation than adults, with females being the sex with the lowest aggregation. There was a high correlation between E. banksi motile forms and adult females with the total population, thus both were used as reference stages to develop sampling plans. We recommend binomial sampling of 100 leaves for female monitoring, sampling two leaves per tree on 25 trees per transect regularly spaced along two diagonal transects, the first oriented northeast to southwest and the second northwest to southeast. To be more accurate, it is possible to survey the presence/absence of motile forms. In this case, four leaves per tree in 50 trees per transect should be monitored. CONCLUSION: This study has resulted in the first sampling plan for E. banksi, one of the most damaging citrus mite species described so far. The binomial sampling plan involves monitoring reference developmental stages, as well as a reasonable sample size that makes it applicable in field sampling for decisions making based on a future intervention threshold. © 2024 The Author(s). Pest Management Science published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.

Who is more vulnerable to effects of long-term exposure to air pollution on COVID-19 hospitalisation?

OBJECTIVE: Factors that shape individuals' vulnerability to the effects of air pollution on COVID-19 severity remain poorly understood. We evaluated whether the association between long-term exposure to ambient NO2, PM2.5, and PM10 and COVID-19 hospitalisation differs by age, sex, individual income, area-level socioeconomic status, arterial hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. METHODS: We analysed a population-based cohort of 4,639,184 adults in Catalonia, Spain, during 2020. We fitted Cox proportional hazard models adjusted for several potential confounding factors and evaluated the interaction effect between vulnerability indicators and the 2019 annual average of NO2, PM2.5, and PM10. We evaluated interaction on both additive and multiplicative scales. RESULTS: Overall, the association was additive between air pollution and the vulnerable groups. Air pollution and vulnerability indicators had a synergistic (greater than additive) effect for males and individuals with low income or living in the most deprived neighbourhoods. The Relative Excess Risk due to Interaction (RERI) was 0.21, 95 % CI, 0.15 to 0.27 for NO2 and 0.16, 95 % CI, 0.11 to 0.22 for PM2.5 for males; 0.13, 95 % CI, 0.09 to 0.18 for NO2 and 0.10, 95 % CI, 0.05 to 0.14 for PM2.5 for lower individual income and 0.17, 95 % CI, 0.12 to 0.22 for NO2 and 0.09, 95 % CI, 0.05 to 0.14 for PM2.5 for lower area-level socioeconomic status. Results for PM10 were similar to PM2.5. Results on multiplicative scale were inconsistent. CONCLUSIONS: Long-term exposure to air pollution had a larger synergistic effect on COVID-19 hospitalisation for males and those with lower individual- and area-level socioeconomic status.

Short-term exposure to air pollution and hospital admission after COVID-19 in Catalonia: the COVAIR-CAT study.

BACKGROUND: A growing body of evidence has reported positive associations between long-term exposure to air pollution and poor COVID-19 outcomes. Inconsistent findings have been reported for short-term air pollution, mostly from ecological study designs. Using individual-level data, we studied the association between short-term variation in air pollutants [nitrogen dioxide (NO2), particulate matter with a diameter of <2.5 µm (PM2.5) and a diameter of <10 µm (PM10) and ozone (O3)] and hospital admission among individuals diagnosed with COVID-19. METHODS: The COVAIR-CAT (Air pollution in relation to COVID-19 morbidity and mortality: a large population-based cohort study in Catalonia, Spain) cohort is a large population-based cohort in Catalonia, Spain including 240 902 individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 in the primary care system from 1 March until 31 December 2020. Our outcome was hospitalization within 30 days of COVID-19 diagnosis. We used individual residential address to assign daily air-pollution exposure, estimated using machine-learning methods for spatiotemporal prediction. For each pandemic wave, we fitted Cox proportional-hazards models accounting for non-linear-distributed lagged exposure over the previous 7 days. RESULTS: Results differed considerably by pandemic wave. During the second wave, an interquartile-range increase in cumulative weekly exposure to air pollution (lag0_7) was associated with a 12% increase (95% CI: 4% to 20%) in COVID-19 hospitalizations for NO2, 8% (95% CI: 1% to 16%) for PM2.5 and 9% (95% CI: 3% to 15%) for PM10. We observed consistent positive associations for same-day (lag0) exposure, whereas lag-specific associations beyond lag0 were generally not statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: Our study suggests positive associations between NO2, PM2.5 and PM10 and hospitalization risk among individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 during the second wave. Cumulative hazard ratios were largely driven by exposure on the same day as hospitalization.

Effect of residential relocation on environmental exposures in European cohorts: An exposome-wide approach.

Residential relocation is increasingly used as a natural experiment in epidemiological studies to assess the health impact of changes in environmental exposures. Since the likelihood of relocation can be influenced by individual characteristics that also influence health, studies may be biased if the predictors of relocation are not appropriately accounted for. Using data from Swedish and Dutch adults (SDPP, AMIGO), and birth cohorts (BAMSE, PIAMA), we investigated factors associated with relocation and changes in multiple environmental exposures across life stages. We used logistic regression to identify baseline predictors of moving, including sociodemographic and household characteristics, health behaviors and health. We identified exposure clusters reflecting three domains of the urban exposome (air pollution, grey surface, and socioeconomic deprivation) and conducted multinomial logistic regression to identify predictors of exposome trajectories among movers. On average, 7 % of the participants relocated each year. Before relocating, movers were consistently exposed to higher levels of air pollution than non-movers. Predictors of moving differed between the adult and birth cohorts, highlighting the importance of life stages. In the adult cohorts, moving was associated with younger age, smoking, and lower education and was independent of cardio-respiratory health indicators (hypertension, BMI, asthma, COPD). Contrary to adult cohorts, higher parental education and household socioeconomic position were associated with a higher probability of relocation in birth cohorts, alongside being the first child and living in a multi-unit dwelling. Among movers in all cohorts, those with a higher socioeconomic position at baseline were more likely to move towards healthier levels of the urban exposome. We provide new insights into predictors of relocation and subsequent changes in multiple aspects of the urban exposome in four cohorts covering different life stages in Sweden and the Netherlands. These results inform strategies to limit bias due to residential self-selection in epidemiological studies using relocation as a natural experiment.

Long-term exposure to air pollution and severe COVID-19 in Catalonia: a population-based cohort study.

The association between long-term exposure to ambient air pollutants and severe COVID-19 is uncertain. We followed 4,660,502 adults from the general population in 2020 in Catalonia, Spain. Cox proportional models were fit to evaluate the association between annual averages of PM2.5, NO2, BC, and O3 at each participant's residential address and severe COVID-19. Higher exposure to PM2.5, NO2, and BC was associated with an increased risk of COVID-19 hospitalization, ICU admission, death, and hospital length of stay. An increase of 3.2 µg/m3 of PM2.5 was associated with a 19% (95% CI, 16-21) increase in hospitalizations. An increase of 16.1 µg/m3 of NO2 was associated with a 42% (95% CI, 30-55) increase in ICU admissions. An increase of 0.7 µg/m3 of BC was associated with a 6% (95% CI, 0-13) increase in deaths. O3 was positively associated with severe outcomes when adjusted by NO2. Our study contributes robust evidence that long-term exposure to air pollutants is associated with severe COVID-19.

Health and environmental impacts of drinking water choices in Barcelona, Spain: A modelling study.

Quantitative evidence of health and environmental tradeoffs between individuals' drinking water choices is needed to inform decision-making. We evaluated health and environmental impacts of drinking water choices using health impact and life cycle assessment (HIA, LCA) methodologies applied to data from Barcelona, Spain. We estimated the health and environmental impacts of four drinking water scenarios for the Barcelona population: 1) currently observed drinking water sources; a complete shift to 2) tap water; 3) bottled water; or 4) filtered tap water. We estimated the local bladder cancer incidence attributable to trihalomethane (THM) exposure, based on survey data on drinking water sources, THM levels, published exposure-response functions, and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) from the Global Burden of Disease 2017. We estimated the environmental impacts (species lost/year, and resources use) from waste generation and disposal, use of electricity, chemicals, and plastic to produce tap or bottled drinking water using LCA. The scenario where the entire population consumed tap water yielded the lowest environmental impact on ecosystems and resources, while the scenario where the entire population drank bottled water yielded the highest impacts (1400 and 3500 times higher for species lost and resource use, respectively). Meeting drinking water needs using bottled or filtered tap water led to the lowest bladder cancer DALYs (respectively, 140 and 9 times lower than using tap water) in the Barcelona population. Our study provides the first attempt to integrate HIA and LCA to compare health and environmental impacts of individual water consumption choices. Our results suggest that the sustainability gain from consuming water from public supply relative to bottled water may exceed the reduced risk of bladder cancer due to THM exposure from consuming bottled water in Barcelona. Our analysis highlights several critical data gaps and methodological challenges in quantifying integrated health and environmental impacts of drinking water choices.

Digestive tract morphology and enzyme activities of juvenile diploid and triploid Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) fed fishmeal-based diets with or without fish protein hydrolysates.

Triploid, sterile Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) could make a contribution to the development of the farming industry, but uncertainties about the performance and welfare of triploids have limited their adoption by farmers. In this study, we compared the ontogeny of digestive tract morphology and enzyme activities (pepsin, trypsin, chymotrypsin, alkaline phosphatase and aminopeptidase) of diploid and triploid Atlantic salmon. Fish were fed diets based on fishmeal (STD) or a mix of fishmeal and hydrolysed fish proteins (HFM) whilst being reared at low temperature from start-feeding to completion of the parr-smolt transformation. Fish weights for each ploidy and feed combination were used to calculate thermal growth coefficients (TGCs) that spanned this developmental period, and the data were used to examine possible relationships between enzyme activities and growth. At the end of the experiment, faeces were collected and analyzed to determine the apparent digestibility coefficients (ADCs) of the dietary amino acids (AAs). Digestive tract histo-morphology did not differ substantially between ploidies and generally reflected organ maturation and functionality. There were no consistent differences in proteolytic enzyme activities resulting from the inclusion of HFM in the diet, nor was there improved digestibility and AA bioavailability of the HFM feed in either diploid or triploid fish. The triploid salmon had lower ADCs than diploids for most essential and non-essential AAs in both diets (STD and HFM), but without there being any indication of lower intestinal protease activity in triploid fish. When trypsin-to-chymotrypsin activity and trypsin and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) ratios (T:C and T:ALP, respectively) were considered in combination with growth data (TGC) low T:C and T:ALP values coincided with times of reduced fish growth, and vice versa, suggesting that T:C and T:ALP may be used to predict recent growth history and possible growth potential.