Midcareer Investigator Award: Urban School Allergen Exposures and Childhood Asthm

描述（由申请人提供）：儿童哮喘，特别是在城市环境中，是一个重要的发病率来源。孩子们一天的大部分时间都在学校度过。该项目的直接目标是确定学校特定环境暴露和遗传因素变化与哮喘发病率的作用。候选人/PI是一名委员会认证的过敏症专家/免疫学家，拥有临床流行病学硕士学位，并经营一家由NIH资助的哮喘/过敏临床研究中心。她在以患者为导向的临床研究和指导方面具有专长。她的环境包括无与伦比的社区关系、基础设施、资源和合作者。职业发展目标是确保候选人将有足够的时间进行指导和以患者为导向的临床研究活动。该奖项还将允许她进一步学习统计方法，研究设计和基因-环境相互作用，以帮助她扩大以患者为导向的研究项目。这将使我们朝着进一步理解表观遗传/环境相互作用的总体目标迈进，从而设计和实施更有效的以学校为重点的干预措施，以降低儿童哮喘的严重程度和发病率。研究假设教室/学校特定过敏原/霉菌暴露水平的变化将与甲基化、气道炎症和哮喘症状的表观遗传变化有关。我们将比较选定基因上的甲基化标记与教室特异性过敏原/霉菌暴露和哮喘健康结果的变化之间的关系。我们还将在年龄/性别匹配的无哮喘学生中比较这些结果，作为在同一教室上课的对照组，以进一步解释我们的发现。这项研究的影响可能会产生新的生物标志物，可以告诉我们基于学校的干预措施对儿童哮喘及其免疫调节的重要环境暴露的有效性，解决一个关键的公共卫生问题。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Childhood asthma, particularly in urban environments, is a source of significant morbidity. Children spend the majority of their day in school. The immediate goal of this project is to determine the role of changes in school-specific environmental exposures and genetic factors and asthma morbidity. The Candidate/PI is a board-certified allergist/immunologist with a MS in clinical epidemiology and runs a NIH funded asthma/allergy clinical research center. She has expertise in patient-oriented clinical research and mentoring. Her environment includes unparalleled community relationships, infrastructure, resources, and collaborators. Career Development Goals are to ensure that the candidate will be provided sufficient time for mentoring and patient oriented clinical research activities. The award will also allow her to further her education in statistical methods, study design, and gene-environment interactions to help her expand her patient oriented research program. This will allow us to move towards our overall goal of further our understanding of epigenetic/environmental interactions to design and implement more effective school focused interventions to reduce the severity and incidence of childhood asthma. The research hypothesis is that changes in classroom/school specific allergen/mold exposure levels will be associated with epigenetic changes in methylation, airway inflammation, and asthma symptoms. We will compare our methylation markers on selected genes potentially important in asthma with changes in the classroom-specific allergen/mold exposure and asthma health outcomes. We will also compare these results in a subset of age/gender matched students without asthma as controls attending the same classrooms to further the interpretation of our findings. The impact of this research may result in novel biomarkers that could inform us about the efficacy of school-based interventions against environmental exposures important to childhood asthma and its immune modulation, addressing a critical public health problem.