Environmental Etiologies of Neurological Disorders (NEUROTOXICOLOGY 24)

描述(由申请人提供) 神经疾病的环境病因：影响风险的因素：基因、年龄、性别、营养、同时暴露、社会经济地位。越来越明显的是，许多人类神经系统疾病和障碍是由多种危险因素的复杂相互作用引起的，环境化学物质暴露可能是其中一个促成风险的因素。其他环境和宿主因素，如遗传背景、发育阶段、饮食状况、免疫状况、肥胖、压力、社会经济状况、性别、衰老、行为和并存疾病状态，以及同时接触化学物质，也可能起到作用。例如，帕金森氏症表现出性别差异，咖啡因和吸烟可以提供保护。铅和甲基汞等神经毒物的影响很大程度上受到发育窗口期的影响，儿童表现出明显更大的脆弱性。因此，要充分了解任何环境毒物对人类神经系统疾病或紊乱构成的真正风险，最终将需要评估其与其他相关环境、宿主和遗传风险因素以及其他影响因素的相互作用。 尽管有这些复杂性，用于理解环境暴露作为人类疾病风险因素的影响的范例仍然依赖于未能捕捉到这一现实的方法。相反，他们把重点放在与其他风险因素隔离的单一化学品暴露上。动物研究经常检查单一化学物质对年轻成年动物(主要是雄性啮齿动物)的影响，例如，忽略了年龄和性别的潜在重要性。流行病学和临床研究一般侧重于环境暴露的主要影响，因为由于样本量不足，反映在统计相互作用中的风险修正被认为是无法获得的。因此，作为疾病和障碍的模型，目前的研究方法与人类的实际情况相去甚远，限制了确定生物标记物和治疗策略的病理生理机制的能力，从而限制了保护人类健康的能力。 了解宿主和环境风险因素与环境化学物质暴露在神经系统疾病和紊乱的病因学中的相互作用，有助于发展越来越现实和有效的疾病动物模型，以及更有针对性的临床/流行病学研究。改进的动物和人类模型将加快发现与环境有关的疾病和障碍的病理生理机制，从而提高确定疾病发生和发展的生物标记物以及治疗干预的潜在目标的能力，从而改进预防和检测战略。在全球公共卫生保护的背景下，了解风险因素如何相互作用也是至关重要的，因为不同的人口和文化带来了不同的风险因素。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant) "Environmental Etiologies of Neurological Disorders: Modifiers of Risk: Genes, Age, Gender, Nutrition, Simultaneous Exposures, Socio-Economic Status". It has become increasingly evident that many human neurological diseases and disorders arise from complex interactions of multiple risk factors, of which environmental chemical exposures may serve as one contributing risk. Other environmental and host factors, such as genetic background, stage of development, dietary status, immune status, obesity, stress, socioeconomic status, gender, aging, behavior, and intercurrent disease state, as well as simultaneous chemical exposures, can also contribute. For example, Parkinson's disease exhibits gender differences, and protection is conferred by caffeine and smoking. The impact of neurotoxicants like lead and methylmercury is heavily influenced by developmental windows, with children showing significantly greater vulnerability. Thus, a full understanding of the true risk posed by any environmental toxicant for human neurological diseases or disorders will ultimately require assessments of its interaction with other relevant environmental, host and genetic risk factors and other modifiers of effect. Despite these complexities, the paradigms used to understand the impact of environmental exposures as risk factors for human diseases continue to rely on approaches that fail to capture this reality. Instead, they focus on exposures to single chemicals in isolation from other risk factors. Animal studies often examine effects of a single chemical in young adult, mostly male rodents, ignoring, for instance, the potential importance of age and gender. Epidemiological and clinical studies generally focus on main effects of environmental exposures, since risk modification, as reflected in statistical interactions, is considered inaccessible because of inadequate sample sizes. Consequently, as models of diseases and disorders, current research approaches are distant from actual human conditions, constraining the ability to determine pathophysiological mechanisms from which biomarkers and therapeutic strategies can be identified, thereby limiting the ability to protect human health. An understanding of the interactions of host and environmental risk factors with environmental chemical exposures in the etiology of neurological diseases and disorders allows the development of increasingly more realistic and valid animal models of disease, and more focused clinical /epidemiological studies. Refined animal and human models will expedite the discovery of pathophysiological mechanisms of environmentally-related diseases and disorders, and thus improve the ability to define biomarkers of disease onset and progression, as well as potential targets for therapeutic interventions, thereby leading to improved prevention and detection strategies. Understanding how risk factors interact is also critical in the context of global public health protection, since different populations and cultures bring different sets of risk factors into play.