Neighborhood Specific Epigenome Analysis: A Promising Approach to Discovering Causes of Health Disparities Amenable to Prevention

A high priority for future genomic research needs to be the development of transdisciplinary research illuminating the genomic pathways through which environmental exposures lead to disparities in health between affluent and socioeconomically disadvantaged and racial and ethnic minorities in the USA. This disparity in mortality is due primarily to chronic diseases related to poverty, lifestyle, and exposure to known environmental risks associated with living in a so-called “disadvantaged neighborhood.”

There is now growing evidence to show that the poor health outcomes are due to the cumulative and potentially synergistic effects of multiple environmental stressors. The negative consequences of “neighborhood disadvantage”, which accumulates over the course of a lifetime, are likely imprinted in DNA and chromatin through mechanisms that are yet to be elucidated. Such environmental exposures can program gene expression by epigenetic mechanisms, giving rise to stable marks or archive of past environmental exposures. The unique “trail” or “footprint” left on the epigenome can provide important clues for identifying and characterizing specific gene-environment interactions.

This presentation emphasizes a long overlooked mechanism to account for how the environment can “get under the skin.” Studies are cited which show that environmental exposures can influence human health and disease by modifying the mitotically and meiotically stable epigenetic markings linking cumulative life exposures. Such stable epigenetic alterations can be used as biomarkers in public health and medicine to elucidate mechanisms of gene-environmental interactions in development of chronic diseases.