Cognitive, Immunological, and Neurophysiological Consequences of Home Radon Exposure in Children and Adolescents

儿童和青少年家庭氡暴露的认知、免疫和神经生理学后果

• 批准号: 10346726
• 负责人: Brittany Taylor
• 金额: $ 26.74万
• 依托单位: FATHER FLANAGAN'S BOYS' HOME
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-03-01 至 2027-01-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10346726
• 关键词: Academic achievement; Address; Adolescent; Adolescent Development; Adult; Affect; Air; Air Pollution; Area; Attention; Attention Concentration; Awareness; Brain; Cell physiology; Cells; Child; Child Development; Childhood; Chronic; Cigarette; Cognition; Cognitive; Communities; Country; County; Coupled; Dangerousness; Data; Development; Enrollment; Environment; Environmental Pollutants; Environmental Pollution; Exhibits; Exposure to; Foundations; Functional disorder; Future; Gases; Goals; Health; Health Policy; Home; Immunologics; Incidence; Industrialization; Inflammation; Inflammatory; Inflammatory Response; Inhalation; Investigation; Knowledge; Lead; Link; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Magnetoencephalography; Malignant Neoplasms; Malignant neoplasm of lung; Measurement; Measures; Mediating; Mental Health; Nebraska; Neurocognitive; Neuropsychology; Organ; Outcome Study; Pathology; Performance; Persons; Pesticides; Process; Public Health; Radiation; Radioactive; Radon; Research Priority; Research Project Grants; Risk; Rodent Model; Role; Sampling; Shapes; Smoking; Soil; Source; Stimulus; Structure; System; Techniques; Thick; Time; Tissues; Toxic Environmental Substances; Toxic effect; United States; United States Environmental Protection Agency; United States National Institutes of Health; Work; Youth; behavior measurement; brain health; carcinogenesis; carcinogenicity; cigarette smoke; cognitive development; cognitive function; cognitive performance; design; dosage; gray matter; high risk; home test; indexing; inflammatory marker; innovation; multimodal neuroimaging; multimodality; neurodevelopment; neuroimaging; neurophysiology; relating to nervous system; saliva sample

Project Summary/Abstract: Research Project (1) Cognitive, Immunological, and Neurophysiological Consequences of Home Radon Exposure in Children and Adolescents The public at large has grown keenly aware of the effects of environmental pollutants and toxins on the developing body. From lead and pesticides to cigarette smoke and industrial air pollution, studies consistently show that environmental toxins have substantial, lasting impacts on the development of youth, including chronic deficits in cognitive and brain development. These consequences can have reverberating impacts on academic achievement and mental health. That said, one surprisingly common, but rarely studied environmental toxin is radon. Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that accumulates in homes and poses significant health risks, including increased risk of developing certain cancers, and damage to developmentally sensitive tissues and organs (e.g., the brain) through accentuated inflammatory processes. The United States (US) Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set the action limit for home radon concentrations at 4 pCi/L, which is the carcinogenic equivalent of smoking 10 cigarettes per day. An astonishing 1 in 15 homes across the US is expected to have radon concentrations at or above the EPA action limit, leaving a large number of youth across the country chronically exposed to high concentrations of radon. However, studies linking radon toxicity to altered neural and cognitive development are extremely sparse. The current proposal aims to address this critical gap in knowledge by examining the impact of toxic levels of radon exposure on brain and cognitive function in typically-developing youth. Our groundbreaking preliminary work is the first to show that attention (i.e., the ability to direct and maintain focus on specific stimuli and tasks) is uniquely impacted by radon exposure. Specifically, we have found that youth who are chronically-exposed to higher home radon levels had markedly worse performance on behavioral measures of attention, and exhibited altered neural dynamics within the critical brain networks serving attention and higher-order cognition. In the current multimodal neuroimaging study, we will quantify the impact of home radon exposure on multiple distinct attentional systems during child and adolescent development. To this end, we will enroll a large sample of typically-developing youth who will undergo magnetoencephalography (MEG) during a battery of tasks designed to assess multiple unique neural systems serving attentional processing. Youth will also complete structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), complete a battery of neuropsychological assessments targeting attentional abilities, and provide saliva samples to capture measures of inflammation that are known to be elevated in the context of radon exposure. Our specific aims are to 1) identify specific attentional domains and neural substrates that are affected by radon exposure, and 2) quantify the mechanistic role of inflammatory processes through which radon alters attentional development in youth. The outcomes of this study have the potential to shape the future of public health policy surrounding radon awareness and mitigation efforts, and this is especially true in the surrounding region where home radon levels are some of the highest in the nation.

项目概要/摘要：研究项目（1） 认知、免疫学和神经生理学后果 儿童和青少年的家庭氡暴露 广大公众越来越敏锐地意识到环境污染物和毒素对人类健康的影响。 发育中的身体。从铅和农药到香烟烟雾和工业空气污染，研究不断 表明环境毒素对青年的发展具有重大、持久的影响，包括慢性影响 认知和大脑发育缺陷。这些后果可能会对学术产生深远影响 成就和心理健康。也就是说，一种非常常见但很少研究的环境毒素是 氡。氡是一种天然存在的放射性气体，会积聚在家中并对健康造成重大影响 风险，包括增加患某些癌症的风险以及对发育敏感组织的损害 和器官（例如大脑）通过加剧的炎症过程。美国（US）环境 环境保护局 (EPA) 将家庭氡浓度的行动限值设定为 4 pCi/L，这是致癌物质 相当于每天吸10支烟。令人惊讶的是，全美每 15 个家庭中就有 1 个家庭将拥有 氡气浓度达到或超过美国环保署行动限值，导致全国大量青少年 长期暴露于高浓度氡气中。然而，研究将氡毒性与神经和神经功能改变联系起来。 认知发展极其稀疏。当前的提案旨在解决这一知识上的关键差距 通过检查氡暴露的有毒水平对典型发育中的大脑和认知功能的影响 青年。我们开创性的前期工作首先表明了这种关注（即指导和维持的能力） 专注于特定的刺激和任务）受到氡暴露的独特影响。具体来说，我们发现 长期暴露于家中氡气浓度较高的青少年的行为表现明显较差 注意力的测量，并在服务注意力的关键大脑网络中表现出改变的神经动力学 和高阶认知。在当前的多模式神经影像研究中，我们将量化家庭的影响 儿童和青少年发育期间多个不同注意力系统的氡暴露。为此， 我们将招募大量发育正常的青少年样本，他们将接受脑磁图检查 (MEG) 在一系列旨在评估服务于注意力处理的独特神经系统的任​​务中。 青少年还将完成结构磁共振成像 (MRI)、完成一系列神经心理学 针对注意力能力的评估，并提供唾液样本以捕获炎症指标 已知在氡暴露的情况下会升高。我们的具体目标是 1）确定具体的注意力 受氡暴露影响的域和神经基质，2) 量化氡气暴露的机制作用 氡气通过炎症过程改变青少年的注意力发展。本研究的结果 有潜力塑造围绕氡意识和缓解努力的公共卫生政策的未来， 在周边地区尤其如此，那里的家庭氡气水平是全国最高的。