A European study is to look at how endocrine disruptors (EDs), chemical substances found in items such as plastics, personal care products, textiles, cleaning agents, food, furniture and electronic devices, may alter the hormonal systems of pregnant women and their babies during the first 18 months of life. The project will also assess the effectiveness of a strategy to minimise exposure to these substances.
The perinatal study comes under the European HYPIEND project coordinated by the Eurecat technology centre and will be run at the same time in Spain, Poland and Belgium with over 800 participants. In Catalonia, the research is headed by the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP) and its Women & Health Group led by Dr Inés Velasco from the Obstetrics and Gynaecology Department. It will be rolled out at Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital with the support of ASSIR Badalona (Doctor Robert Health Centre) and ASSIR Sant Adrià del Besòs (Doctor Barraquer Health Centre) and is expected to include over 135 pregnant women and their babies.
Endocrine disruptors can be found in everyday products and may pose a risk to human health through inhalation, ingestion and skin contact. The research will address understanding how these components “alter the hormonal system at a particularly sensitive time in human development coupled with gaining insight into how they impact the hypothalamic-pituitary axis and how to prevent their effects,” says Noemí Boqué, the HYPIEND project’s scientific coordinator and a researcher in Eurecat’s Nutrition and Health Unit.
The project will specifically explore “their effect on the axis where the central nervous system and the endocrine system come together, which regulates hormones such as growth hormone and oxytocin that control key body functions including somatic growth, breastfeeding and adaptation to stress,” adds Núria Canela, director of the Omics Sciences Centre, a joint unit operated by Rovira i Virgili University and Eurecat. “High-sensitivity mass spectrometry-based techniques will be harnessed for this analysis alongside omics data studies to learn how these endocrine disruptors affect metabolism.”
“This is one of the first investigations to look at the effects and hazards of these environmental chemical substances from numerous perspectives,” notes Antoni Caimari, director of Eurecat’s Biotechnology Area. “We hope to find out more about the mechanisms of action through which endocrine disruptor combinations have adverse effects on health.”
Digital platform to drive changes in behaviour
As part of the initiative, Eurecat has built a digital platform based on the behavioural change model which includes a “gamified system that recommends ‘missions’ depending on each participant’s profile and furnishes specific tips about lifestyle habits and lessening exposure to endocrine disruptors,” comments Sílvia Orte, head of the Health Data Science line in Eurecat’s Digital Health Unit.
The platform features three types of content to encourage behavioural change. They are motivational messages to set out the need for change and step up effectiveness; the ‘missions’, which are specific tasks showing how to carry out the changes, and the reinforcement messages, designed to keep them going over the long term. This tool has been developed as an app and a website each with specific functions and will be gradually rolled out over the course of the study.
Study participants will be randomly assigned to either an intervention or a control group while samples will be collected to measure levels of endocrine disruptors and other parameters. The intervention will consist of using the digital platform to minimise exposure to EDs plus workshops run by a multidisciplinary team of doctors, psychologists and nutritionists.
The HYPIEND project will also conduct a second study with children aged 6 to 8 in schools in Spain and Belgium which is to kick off at the start of the 2025-2026 school year. It will assess exposure to these substances in children and introduce habits to reduce it.
The project has a €7 million budget and brings together expert teams in computational toxicology, biochemistry and molecular biology, human nutrition, omics sciences, epidemiology and digital health. It will tap cutting-edge mass spectrometry techniques to detect chemical compounds even at very low concentrations along with behaviour recognition and alteration techniques to promote actions mitigating environmental exposure.
“The European HYPIEND project is a Eurecat initiative in a strategic and increasingly pressing area, namely environmental health,” points out Felip Miralles, Health Technologies director at Eurecat. “We are building up evidence on how climate change and environmental risks impact human health and mapping out strategies to mitigate these effects.”
The HYPIEND consortium is made up of 14 partners from eight European countries. Alongside the Eurecat technology centre as project coordinator, they include Germans Trias i Pujol Health Sciences Research Institute (IGTP-CERCA), the University of Granada, ProtoQSAR and HULAFE – Health Research Institute Hospital La Fe; Stichting Radboud University (SRU) in the Netherlands; Sciensano, the Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven) and the University of Liege (ULIEGE) in Belgium; Kungliga Tekniska Hoegskolan (KTH) in Sweden; Ksztalcenia Podyplomowego Medical Centre in Poland; Enco SRL from Italy; King’s College London in the UK, and the University of Geneva in Switzerland.
