Background: Growing evidence exists about the fetal and environmental origins of hypertension, but mainly limited to single-exposure studies. The exposome has been proposed as a more holistic approach by studying many exposures simultaneously. Objectives: This study aims to evaluate the association between a wide range of prenatal and postnatal exposures and blood pressure (BP) in children. Methods: Systolic and diastolic BP were measured among 1277 children from the European HELIX cohort at age 6–11 years. Prenatal (n=89) and postnatal (n=128) exposures include air pollution, built environment, meteorology, natural spaces, traffic, noise, chemicals, and lifestyles. Two methods adjusted for confounders were applied: an exposome-wide association study considering the exposures independently, and the deletion-substitution-addition algorithm considering all the exposures simultaneously. Results: Decreases in systolic BP were observed with facility density (β95% CI mmHG change for an interquartile-range increase in exposure: −1.7−2.5;−0.8), maternal concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyl 118 (−1.4−2.6;−0.2) and child concentrations of dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE: −1.6−2.4;−0.7), hexachlorobenzene (−1.5−2.4;−0.6), and mono-benzyl phthalate (−0.7−1.3;−0.1), while increases in systolic BP were observed with outdoor temperature during pregnancy (1.60.2;2.9), high fish intake during pregnancy (2.00.4;3.5), maternal cotinine concentrations (1.2−0.3;2.8), and child perfluorooctanoate concentrations (0.90.1;1.6). Decreases in diastolic BP were observed with outdoor temperature at examination (−1.4−2.3;−0.5) and child DDE concentrations (−1.1−1.9;−0.3) while increases in diastolic BP were observed with maternal bisphenol-A concentrations (0.70.1;1.4), high fish intake during pregnancy (1.2−0.2;2.7), and child copper concentrations (0.90.3;1.6). Conclusion: This study suggests that early-life exposure to several chemicals, as well as built environment and meteorological factors, may affect BP in children.
Warembourg et al. (2019) studied this question.