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A Critical Assessment of Exposures Integration in Exposome Research

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Integrative Approaches in Environmental Health and Exposome Research

Abstract

The exposome refers to an emergent research field, the aim of which is to develop an integrative science of the totality of exposures to which an individual is subjected over the course of their life and which influence their health. This contribution offers a critical analysis of the promises and realisations of this emerging field as regards the holistic integration of exposures and the goal of delivering a more precise explanation of the disease-exposure associations. First, two research orientations are distinguished in the field: one more reductionistic, mainly relying on the biomarker approach and omics technologies; the other more comprehensive as regards the scope of the data and the disciplines integrated. I then show that various meanings are given to “integration” and to “holism”, before arguing that the biomarker approach and the mechanistic view of causation, central to the more reductionistic orientation, is not necessarily the most suitable to achieve the goal of a holistic integration of exposures. The evidence surrounding the health benefits to the population and individuals of adopting the aim of a strong explanative integration is also discussed. I conclude by affirming the need for more reflection on the type and nature, relevance and value, of integration itself, before the exposome field develops any further.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Precision medicine is an extension of so-called personalized medicine, which aims to adapt prevention and treatment to the individual characteristics of patients. To this end, precision medicine draws on the collection and analysis of massive individual data (National Research Council 2011; Collins and Varmus 2015).

  2. 2.

    See for example the editorial by Gary Miller justifying the creation of a dedicated journal “Exposome” at Oxford University Press: “Exposome: a new field, a new journal”, Exposome, 2021, vol. 1, N° 1.

  3. 3.

    Michel Morange clearly showed with respect to the concept of the gene that its fuzzy and elusive character is not in itself a problem. It remains possible to put forward more precise local and contextual definitions. Above all, he underlined that the plasticity of scientific concepts is in reality necessary for scientific work. “To give precise definitions of scientific concepts would be to rigidify them, to prevent this permanent reorganization of knowledge which is the motor of scientific progress. Because a concept is fuzzy, it is rich in explanatory potential” (Morange 1998, 39, our translation). I thank Pierre-Olivier Méthot for having provided this reference.

  4. 4.

    The evaluation of the proportion of diseases due to the environment is particularly complex, and each researcher puts forward their own numbers. See Slama (2017). Moreover, a radical criticism has been made by the social epidemiologist Nancy Krieger (2017)—an author who will be central in section 4 for our critical analysis of the biosocial integration in exposomics—in a paper arguing that environmental causes and other health causes are not additive in a way that makes it possible to attribute X% to genetics and X% to the environment (many thanks to the anonymous reviewer for this reference).

  5. 5.

    The question of the inclusion of behavioural factors in the category of environmental factors is a subject of debate. Lifestyle is sometimes included in the notion of environment and sometimes distinguished as an entirely separate category (as in the WHO categorization).

  6. 6.

    On the more general question of the “scientific” vulnerability of the environmental sciences, which make them particularly “exposed” to conflicts of political and economic value, see Shostak (2013).

  7. 7.

    https://humanexposomeproject.com.

  8. 8.

    See footnote 2.

  9. 9.

    The meaning attributed to the suffix “ome” in “exposome” is ambiguous. It can just as well designate the totality of exposures, whatever their nature might be, as the totality of certain sorts of biomarkers of exposure at the molecular level. In this latter case, “ome” has the meaning of the suffix used in so-called “omic” technologies, which concern the systematic analysis of the totality of certain sorts of molecules: DNA (genomic); RNA (transcriptomic); proteins (proteomic); cellular metabolites (metabolomic); and lipids (lipidomic). For greater clarity, it would be helpful to speak only of the “exposomic” in this latter sense (I use the notation “expos-omic”) and to privilege the notion of “exposology” for the former.

  10. 10.

    Part of those three paragraphs has been written by Yohan Fayet in the context of our collaboration in the project “EPIEXPO”. Many thanks to him.

  11. 11.

    This debate has been compared to the one opposing advocates of the miasmic theory (and hygienism) to advocates of the theory of germs at the end of the nineteenth century (Loomis and Wing 1990; Susser 1999).

  12. 12.

    The PHE approach aims at integrating “information about endogenous and exogenous exposure mechanisms, processes and outcomes with mediating and moderating factors at both the individual and population health levels” (Juarez et al. 2014, 12870).

  13. 13.

    This explanatory mode of integration remains a less clearly determined horizon in approaches like the “public health exposome” (Juarez et al.) or the “socio-exposome” (Senier et al.). One may no doubt speak in the context of these approaches of a mode of integration closer to pluralism or to interdisciplinarity than to integration in the strong sense of the term (see the notion of interdisciplinary success without integration [Grüne-Yanoff 2016]).

  14. 14.

    A reference is made to Nancy Krieger (2005).

  15. 15.

    That is explicit on the internet site of the study, where it is specified that Lifepath project contributes to the development of the study of the exposome. See: https://www.lifepathproject.eu/content/exposome-new-frontier-environmental-research.

  16. 16.

    The “allostatic load” represents the cumulative effects of a dysregulation of the biological system with persistent badly regulated allostatic responses. On this concept, see (Beckie 2012; Johnson et al. 2017).

  17. 17.

    Lifepath project is cited as a classic example of this quest for integration and as leading to the introduction of new concepts and methods to this end (Ghiara and Russo 2019, 8).

  18. 18.

    The manipulationist concept of causation is based on the following guiding idea: the C variable is in a causal relation with respect to the E variable if and only if interventions on C make it possible to modify the value of E.

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Acknowledgements

I would first like to thank Henry Dicks for his precious linguistic help. I also warmly thank the two blind reviewers for their very judicious remarks and advices. This contribution is the fruit of work carried out in the pluridisciplinary research programme “EPIEXPO” (“For a critical epistemology of the exposome”) at the Rabelais Institute in Lyon (ANR-17-CONV-0002 PLASCAN grant). Yohan Fayet and Thibaut Serviant-Fine have made important contributions to the development of the present reflections. I warmly thank them for our close and constructive collaboration in this context. I would also like to thank Séverine Louvel, Marc Billaud, Pierre-Olivier Méthot, Federica Russo and Francesca Merlin for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

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    Élodie Giroux

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Giroux, É. (2023). A Critical Assessment of Exposures Integration in Exposome Research. In: Giroux, É., Merlin, F., Fayet, Y. (eds) Integrative Approaches in Environmental Health and Exposome Research. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28432-8_6

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