Understanding our lifetime exposure to various chemicals through the exposome offers a more comprehensive approach to protecting public health, supported by the ATHLETE project’s advanced data analysis toolbox.
This blogpost provides an overview of the Athlete toolbox and how exposome researchers can use it to analyse data.
The impact of our environment on health
People are exposed to more chemical pollutants than ever before, whether it’s through personal care items, packaging, or pesticides.
By studying our lifetime exposure to our environment, or the human exposome, we get a broader, more interconnected view of how our environment shapes our health. This holistic approach, which moves away from solely studying individual exposures, allows us to safeguard public health.
There is a pressing need for more advanced data analysis to navigate the intricacies of the exposome, making research findings more robust and replicable. ATHLETE’s toolbox equips researchers with advanced statistical analysis methodologies and tools, pre-empting the next generation of analytical challenges in exposome research.
Navigating the complexities of the exposome
By providing researchers with open access and cutting-edge methodologies, the ATHLETE toolbox empowers them to uncover novel insights into the intricate relationships between environmental exposures and human health. ATHLETE’s toolbox is made up of a set of resources that allow researchers to conduct in-depth analyses and derive meaningful insights from large-scale exposome datasets.
Tailored to the unique challenges of exposome research, the resources within the toolbox allow researchers to:
- Track how the environment affects our health over time.
- Study the cumulative impact of multiple exposures on health.
- Explore the molecular mechanisms underlying environmental influences on health.
- Make more reliable cause-effect inferences about exposome-health links.
- Securely collaborate and share knowledge with the exposome research community.
Building on DataSHIELD technology, one tool allows researchers to analyse datasets from different places without sharing them. Researchers can, therefore, work on complex analyses together while keeping each dataset private and secure, allowing for better collaboration with large networks, such as the European Human Exposome Network (EHEN).
