Integrative respiratory epidemiology

More specifically, the research conducted by the team members focus on the study of :

1. Associations of exposure to disinfectants and cleaning products in daycare and at home with incidence and persistence of respiratory symptoms in children (contact: N. Le Moual),
2. Associations between daycare environment, nasal microbiota and respiratory health in children (contact: O. Dumas),
3. Associations of occupational exposures with asthma and COPD in adults (contact: O. Dumas/N. Le Moual),
4. Associations of nutritional factors (diet, physical activity, obesity) with asthma and COPD in adults (contact: R. Varraso),
5. Associations of indoor exposure to molds with asthma, rhinitis and lung function (contact: B. Leynaert/R. Nadif),
6. Associations of early menarche, menopause, hormone therapy and hormonal and metabolic status in men and women, with asthma, lung function decline and COPD throughout the life course (contact: B. Leynaert).

The team also conducts researches on:

1. Mechanisms by which the environment affects respiratory health, using biological and genetic approaches (contact: R.Nadif/L.Orsi)
2. Identification of asthma phenotypes/endotypes based on biological characteristics and the study their evolution (contact : L. Orsi),
3. Characterization of rhinitis phenotypes/endotypes and study of their associations with exposure to air pollution (contact: R. Nadif).

The team uses causal inference approaches to take into account several risk factors and their joint effect, and unsupervised clustering approaches to identify phenotypes and endotypes.Our research is based on three cohorts lead or co-lead by the team: Asthma-E3N, CRESPI and EGEA; and in a number of French (Constances, Nutrinet-Santé, ELFE…), European (European Community Respiratory Health Survey [ECRHS]), and international cohorts (Nurses’ Health Studies [NHS, and NHSII], 35th Multicenter Airway Research Collaboration [MARC35], Tasmanian Longitudinal Health Study [TASH]…).