Role of intra-uterine and early post-natal exposure to ambient air pollution and development of deleterious changes in respiratory and reproductive systems in adult life: an experimental study in mice

Abstract

The present project was designed to further investigate the deleterious effects of air pollution in health. The aim of the study is to determine the role of intra-uterine and early post-natal exposure to air pollution as determinant of functional changes in adult life. It is known that children are exposed to several ambiental toxic agents present in air, food and water. Children vulnerability is increased due to intrinsic characteristics of childhood, increased relative exposure, undeveloped metabolism of xenobiotics, high somatic rate and cellular division. To investigate the role of intra-uterine and early post-natal exposure to air pollution, mice will be chronically exposed to ambient air pollution during different steps of development in 3 consecutive generations. Reproductive and respiratory parameters will be evaluated. We will employ two inhalation chambers - one receiving ambient air (polluted chamber) and the other receiving filtered air (clean chamber) - to create the gradient of air pollution necessary to reach our objectives. The exposure chambers are assembled side-by-side in the garden of the Medical School, Sao Paulo University. In the filtered system, a series of four filters are in line, reducing both particles and gaseous components in the clean chamber. By mating animals with different exposure history to ambient pollutants, we intend to test the following hypothesis: a) chronic exposure to São Paulo's ambient air pollution promotes airway and lung parenchymal tissue inflammatory changes, airway hyper-responsiveness and reproductive changes; b) reproductive and respiratory parameters can be influenced by exposure to air pollution during initial phases of development; c) intra-uterine and early post-natal exposure to air pollution can have synergistic effects on the observed alterations; d) the magnitude of alterations caused by exposure to air pollution in the initial phases of life can be high enough to cause significative changes in adults life. (AU)