PRCCEH Center member Kristen Lyall, PhD, was awarded more than $2 Million “to study how diet, chemical exposures, and maternal pregnancy complications could contribute to the development of autism” by the new Autism Data Science Initiative housed under the National Institutes of Health.
“Lyall has previously published research that found associations between nongenetic factors and risk of autism, looking at prenatal exposure to air pollution, the prenatal diet, certain chemical exposures like pesticides, and pregnancy complications like gestational diabetes.
Her project will dig deeper into these factors, particularly the prenatal diet and exposure to common chemicals. She’s using data on up to 10,000 pairs of mothers and children from a large U.S. program called the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) consortium.
Another angle of her project will be understanding the underlying biology of how these exposures could be linked to a higher risk of autism.”
Additionally, Judith S. Miller, PhD, MS, of CHOP and the University of Pennsylvania was also awarded funds to study “Genomic and Exposomic Factors in the Cause and Rise of Autism”.
Read the full article in the Philadelphia Inquirer (may be behind paywall)