The Eurecat technology centre is coordinating the European project HYPIEND, an international initiative promoting a study aimed at children aged 6 to 8, with the goal of understanding and preventing the impact of endocrine disruptors on child development and helping to reduce exposure to these chemical compounds that interfere with the hormonal system.
As explained by the project’s technical coordinator and researcher at Eurecat’s Nutrition and Health Unit, Noemí Boqué, “these chemical compounds, present in everyday products such as food, toys or cleaning products, can interfere with the hormonal system and affect children’s metabolic, reproductive and thyroid development, which has been linked to the onset of early puberty.” For this reason, Noemí Boqué stresses the importance of “preventing and educating about exposure to chemical contaminants that can affect their development.”
Within the framework of the HYPIEND project, another study is also being carried out to analyse how these endocrine disruptors may alter the hormonal system of pregnant women and babies during the first eighteen months of life, while also validating the effectiveness of a strategy to minimize exposure. The study is currently under way and volunteers are being sought. In Catalonia, more than 135 pregnant women and their babies are expected to participate.
An educational initiative with families and schools
With this aim, the project is evaluating an educational strategy to reduce exposure to endocrine disruptors through awareness-raising actions and changes in habits.
The study targeting children aged 6 to 8, which will last more than two years, includes an intervention combining educational activities in schools, workshops for parents, and practical actions to reduce exposure to these compounds. The research is being conducted in parallel in Belgium and Spain, with the participation of more than 700 children. Specifically, in Catalonia more than 350 children from 17 schools in the Barcelonès Nord, Maresme, Vallès Oriental and Alt Pirineu regions are taking part.
The project is implementing initiatives such as specific training for teaching staff, activities to promote the adoption of sustainable habits in classrooms, and an evaluation of the reduction in plastic use in school canteens.
In addition, families will take part in four workshops during the first year, where they will learn to identify and reduce sources of exposure at home, such as the use of plastic food containers, cosmetic products or the ventilation of indoor spaces.
Digital tools for awareness and prevention
As part of the project, Eurecat has developed a digital tool through which participating families and educational centres receive information and practical recommendations on how to minimize contact with these substances.
The platform, accessible to families via a mobile application, “offers personalized advice on healthy habits and environmental prevention and integrates training content, interactive materials and monitoring, with the aim of fostering sustainable changes in families’ daily lives,” explains Silvia Orte, Head of the Digital Health Line at Eurecat.
The tool enables the monitoring of family habits and the sharing of educational resources, reinforcing learning between sessions. Its design is based on the Health Action Process Approach (HAPA) model, which combines knowledge, motivation and action to facilitate the adoption of behavioural changes.
Application of omics sciences to analyse results
To assess the effectiveness of the intervention, urine samples will be collected from participating children at several points throughout the study to measure the presence of a wide range of endocrine disruptors originating from plastics, cosmetics, food and even drinking water.
This analysis will be carried out by Eurecat’s Omics Sciences Unit, which will apply advanced methods to identify and quantify these compounds. “Developing and applying new methods to detect these substances in biological samples is essential, given their diversity and the extremely low levels at which they are present, which, although almost undetectable, do have a real impact on metabolism and especially on the neuroendocrine system,” explains Salvador Fernández, researcher at the unit.
For this study, techniques based on highly sensitive mass spectrometry will be applied, complemented by omics-scale analyses to better understand how endocrine disruptors affect the body. These analyzes will include the assessment of gut microbiota, hormonal profiles and epigenetic changes in blood samples.
The aim “is to identify non-invasive exposure biomarkers that can facilitate future studies and help assess both exposure and physiological effects without relying exclusively on urine analyses, which are labour-intensive and only reflect current exposure, but not the cumulative impact of endocrine disruptors,” explains unit researcher Dorota Komar.
In parallel, health, lifestyle and dietary questionnaires will be carried out, enabling the identification of possible changes in pubertal development and lifestyle.
Towards healthier environments for children
With this study, HYPIEND “helps generate scientific evidence on the relationship between environmental exposure and children’s health, while also promoting educational and preventive actions to foster safer and healthier environments for children,” highlights Antoni Caimari, Director of Eurecat’s Biotechnology Area.
The objective, according to Antoni Caimari, is “to demonstrate that a comprehensive and sustained educational strategy can significantly reduce levels of exposure to endocrine disruptors in school-aged children,” adding that “the combination of school- and family-based interventions with innovative digital solutions positions the project as a benchmark initiative in applied research on children’s environmental health.”
This study, carried out within the framework of the HYPIEND project, has been led in Catalonia by the Pediatric Environmental Health Unit of the Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital and the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP), with the collaboration of the Badalona City Council, and in Belgium by the University of Liège and Sciensano.
The project, with a budget of €7 million, brings together teams with expertise in computational toxicology, biochemistry and molecular biology, human nutrition, omics sciences, epidemiology and digital health. It will apply advanced mass spectrometry techniques to detect chemical compounds even at very low concentrations, as well as behaviour recognition and change techniques to promote actions that mitigate environmental exposure.
The HYPIEND consortium consists of a total of 14 partners from 8 European countries. In addition to the Eurecat technology centre, which coordinates the project, partners include the Germans Trias i Pujol Health Sciences Research Institute (IGTP-CERCA), the University of Granada, ProtoQSAR and HULAFE – La Fe Health Research Institute (Spain); Radboud University Stichting (SRU), the Netherlands; Sciensano, KU Leuven and the University of Liège (ULIEGE), Belgium; Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (KTH), Sweden; the Centre of Postgraduate Medical Education (CMKP), Poland; and Enco SRL, Italy. The project also involves King’s College London (United Kingdom) and the University of Geneva (Switzerland).
