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Grady SK, Dojcsak L, Harville EW, Wallace ME, Vilda D, Donneyong MM, Hood DB, Valdez RB, Ramesh A, Im W, Matthews-Juarez P, Juarez PD, Langston MA. Seminar: Scalable Preprocessing Tools for Exposomic Data Analysis. ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH PERSPECTIVES 2023; 131:124201. [PMID: 38109119 PMCID: PMC10727037 DOI: 10.1289/ehp12901] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/14/2023] [Revised: 11/22/2023] [Accepted: 11/28/2023] [Indexed: 12/19/2023]
Abstract
BACKGROUND The exposome serves as a popular framework in which to study exposures from chemical and nonchemical stressors across the life course and the differing roles that these exposures can play in human health. As a result, data relevant to the exposome have been used as a resource in the quest to untangle complicated health trajectories and help connect the dots from exposures to adverse outcome pathways. OBJECTIVES The primary aim of this methods seminar is to clarify and review preprocessing techniques critical for accurate and effective external exposomic data analysis. Scalability is emphasized through an application of highly innovative combinatorial techniques coupled with more traditional statistical strategies. The Public Health Exposome is used as an archetypical model. The novelty and innovation of this seminar's focus stem from its methodical, comprehensive treatment of preprocessing and its demonstration of the positive effects preprocessing can have on downstream analytics. DISCUSSION State-of-the-art technologies are described for data harmonization and to mitigate noise, which can stymie downstream interpretation, and to select key exposomic features, without which analytics may lose focus. A main task is the reduction of multicollinearity, a particularly formidable problem that frequently arises from repeated measurements of similar events taken at various times and from multiple sources. Empirical results highlight the effectiveness of a carefully planned preprocessing workflow as demonstrated in the context of more highly concentrated variable lists, improved correlational distributions, and enhanced downstream analytics for latent relationship discovery. The nascent field of exposome science can be characterized by the need to analyze and interpret a complex confluence of highly inhomogeneous spatial and temporal data, which may present formidable challenges to even the most powerful analytical tools. A systematic approach to preprocessing can therefore provide an essential first step in the application of modern computer and data science methods. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP12901.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stephen K. Grady
- Graduate School of Genome Science and Technology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Levente Dojcsak
- Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Emily W. Harville
- Department Epidemiology, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
| | - Maeve E. Wallace
- Department of Social, Behavioral, and Population Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
| | - Dovile Vilda
- Department of Social, Behavioral, and Population Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
| | | | - Darryl B. Hood
- Division of Environmental Health Sciences, College of Public Health, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA
| | - R. Burciaga Valdez
- Department of Economics, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
| | - Aramandla Ramesh
- Department of Biochemistry, Cancer Biology, Neuroscience & Pharmacology, Meharry Medical College, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Wansoo Im
- Department of Family and Community Medicine, Meharry Medical College, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | | | - Paul D. Juarez
- Department of Family and Community Medicine, Meharry Medical College, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
- Institute on Health Disparities, Equity, and the Exposome, Meharry Medical College, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Michael A. Langston
- Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
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He Y, Patel CJ. Software Application Profile: PXStools—an R package of tools for conducting exposure-wide analysis and deriving polyexposure risk scores. Int J Epidemiol 2022; 52:633-640. [PMCID: PMC10114106 DOI: 10.1093/ije/dyac216] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/24/2022] [Accepted: 11/03/2022] [Indexed: 12/18/2023] Open
Abstract
Motivation Investigating the aggregate burden of environmental factors on human traits and diseases requires consideration of the entire ‘exposome’. However, current studies primarily focus on a single exposure or a handful of exposures at a time, without considering how multiple exposures may be simultaneously associated with each other or with the phenotype. Polyexposure risk scores (PXS) have been shown to predict and stratify risk for disease beyond or complementary to genetic and clinical risk. PXStools provides an analytical package to standardize exposome-wide studies as well as derive and validate polyexposure risk scores. Implementation PXStools is a package for the statistical R. General features The package allows users to (i) conduct exposure-wide association studies; (ii) derive and validate polyexposure risk scores with and without accounting for exposure interactions, using new approaches in regression modelling (hierarchical lasso);(iii) compare goodness of fit between models with and without multiple exposures; and (iv) visualize results. A data frame with a unique identifier, phenotype and exposures is needed as the only input. Various customizations are allowed including data preprocessing (removing missing or unwanted responses), covariates adjustment, multiple hypothesis correction and model specification (linear, logistic, survival). Availability The PXStools source code is freely available on Github at [https://github.com/yixuanh/PXStools ].
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Affiliation(s)
- Yixuan He
- Program in Bioinformatics and Integrative Genomics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Chirag J Patel
- Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
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Abdelzaher H, Tawfik SM, Nour A, Abdelkader S, Elbalkiny ST, Abdelkader M, Abbas WA, Abdelnaser A. Climate change, human health, and the exposome: Utilizing OMIC technologies to navigate an era of uncertainty. Front Public Health 2022; 10:973000. [PMID: 36211706 PMCID: PMC9533016 DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.973000] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/20/2022] [Accepted: 08/17/2022] [Indexed: 01/25/2023] Open
Abstract
Climate change is an anthropogenic phenomenon that is alarming scientists and non-scientists alike. The emission of greenhouse gases is causing the temperature of the earth to rise and this increase is accompanied by a multitude of climate change-induced environmental exposures with potential health impacts. Tracking human exposure has been a major research interest of scientists worldwide. This has led to the development of exposome studies that examine internal and external individual exposures over their lifetime and correlate them to health. The monitoring of health has also benefited from significant technological advances in the field of "omics" technologies that analyze physiological changes on the nucleic acid, protein, and metabolism levels, among others. In this review, we discuss various climate change-induced environmental exposures and their potential health implications. We also highlight the potential integration of the technological advancements in the fields of exposome tracking, climate monitoring, and omics technologies shedding light on important questions that need to be answered.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | - Anwar Abdelnaser
- Institute of Global Health and Human Ecology, The American University in Cairo, New Cairo, Egypt
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