ArticleEnvironmental health perspectives2020
Early-Life Environmental Exposures and Childhood Obesity: An Exposome-Wide Approach.
Article in Environmental health perspectives, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 126 papers, 11 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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Who cites it
126 citing papers in PubMed, 11 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 246 citations in OpenAlex.
- Identifying Key Predictors of Mid-Childhood Obesity in a Population-Based Cohort Study: An Evidence Synthesis and Predictive Modeling Study.Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity · 2025Pooled it
- Ambient air pollution and childhood obesity from infancy to late childhood: An individual participant data meta-analysis of 10 European birth cohorts.Environment international · 2025Pooled it
- Exposure to perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances and pediatric obesity: a systematic review and meta-analysis.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2024Pooled it
- Sex and Gender Differences on the Impact of Metabolism-Disrupting Chemicals on Obesity: A Systematic Review.Nutrients · 2024Pooled it
- Prenatal and childhood exposure to per-/polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) and its associations with childhood overweight and/or obesity: a systematic review with meta-analyses.Environmental health : a global access science source · 2023Pooled it
- Prenatal exposure to phthalate and decreased body mass index of children: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Scientific reports · 2022Pooled it
- The Association between Childhood Exposure to Ambient Air Pollution and Obesity: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Pooled it
- Prenatal exposure to persistent organic pollutants and childhood obesity: A systematic review and meta-analysis of human studies.Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity · 2022Pooled it
- Relationship between Prenatal or Postnatal Exposure to Pesticides and Obesity: A Systematic Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Pooled it
- Exposure to PMInternational journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Effect of maternal smoking during pregnancy on child blood pressure in a European cohort.Scientific reports · 2022Trial
- Associations of blood and urinary heavy metals with obesity risk among children: NHANES 2015-2020.Pediatric research · 2026Article
- Assessing environmental exposures in children: toward a comprehensive exposome approach.Pediatric research · 2026Review
- Update of the human early life exposome (HELIX) cohort: a European population-based exposome cohort-cohort profile.BMJ open · 2026Article
- Integrating omics and artificial intelligence in pediatric environmental health: tools, challenges, and cohort-based insights.Pediatric research · 2026Review
- Chemical exposome patterns in mothers and children across urbanisation levels in five European birth cohorts.Journal of exposure science & environmental epidemiology · 2026Article
- ToxBase: A Multidimensional ToxCast Reference Database for High-Throughput Human Exposome Analysis.Environmental science & technology · 2026Article
- Sex-specific associations between prenatal exposure to environmental pollutants and birth outcomes: a meconium biomonitoring study.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Organochlorine pesticides and obesity in a rural prediabetic population: exploring bidirectional pathways with metabolic indicators.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2026Article
66 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
33 authors at 7 institutions in 8 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundChemical and nonchemical environmental exposures are increasingly suspected to influence the development of obesity, especially during early life, but studies mostly consider single exposure groups.
objectivesOur study aimed to systematically assess the association between a wide array of early-life environmental exposures and childhood obesity, using an exposome-wide approach.
methodsThe HELIX (Human Early Life Exposome) study measured child body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, skinfold thickness, and body fat mass in 1,301 children from six European birth cohorts age 6-11 y. We estimated 77 prenatal exposures and 96 childhood exposures (cross-sectionally), including indoor and outdoor air pollutants, built environment, green spaces, tobacco smoking, and biomarkers of chemical pollutants (persistent organic pollutants, metals, phthalates, phenols, and pesticides). We used an exposure-wide association study (ExWAS) to screen all exposure-outcome associations independently and used the deletion-substitution-addition (DSA) variable selection algorithm to build a final multiexposure model.
resultsThe prevalence of overweight and obesity combined was 28.8%. Maternal smoking was the only prenatal exposure variable associated with higher child BMI ( DISCUSSION: This first comprehensive and systematic analysis of many suspected environmental obesogens strengthens evidence for an association of smoking, air pollution exposure, and characteristics of the built environment with childhood obesity risk. Cross-sectional biomarker results may suffer from reverse causality bias, whereby obesity status influenced the biomarker concentration. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP5975.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.