Children who are born in high traffic areas seem to be more at risk of asthma because exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), byproducts of incomplete combustion from carbon-containing fuels, alters their genes. PAHs have also been linked to other wellness problems, such as increased risk of cancer, heart disease, respiratory ailments, and other inflammatory related diseases.
Published in PLoS ONE, the results may be able to help doctors predict environmentally-induced asthma resulting from exposure to pollution during pregnancy. This contributes to a growing body of evidence that demonstrates the role of epigenetics (how your genes change expression) and disease. In epigenetic studies, the focus is on how genes misbehave to cause illness, and this one explores how traffic exposure alters gene programming in the womb during foetal development, which leads to airway inflammation and asthma in childhood.
According to Shuk-mei Ho, PhD, chair of University of Cincinnati’s Department of Environmental Health, director of the Centre for Environmental Genetics (where the study was conducted) and senior author of the paper, ‘Our data support the concept that environmental exposures can interact with genes during key developmental periods to trigger disease onset later in life, and that tissues are being reprogrammed to become abnormal later.’
The gene ACSL3, which is important for normal lung development, is involved in the alteration. After measuring the white blood cell counts from the umbilical cords of 56 children living in Northern Manhattan and the South Bronx, looking for epigenetic gene alterations that occur in the womb that put children at risk for asthma before the age of five, the researchers found that exposure to PAH led to changes in ACSL3 methylation.
Study co-author, Rachel Miller, MD, director of the Columbia Centre for Children’s Environmental Health (CCCEH) asthma project commented, ‘Understanding early predictors of asthma is an important area of investigation, because they represent potential clinical targets for intervention.’ This could help researchers find ways to intervene in asthma-related child suffering from asthma, and targeting air quality could certainly be one way of decreasing the risk of childhood asthma from maternal exposure to PAH, along with a variety of other diseases.