Some studies have found that environmental exposures such as diet, pesticides, air and water pollution may affect breast cancer risk. However, other studies don’t show this to be true. It is difficult to do these types of studies because people’s exposure to everyday substances vary so greatly and are difficult to report accurately.
UCI and other researchers need to be able to accurately assess people’s environmental exposures in order to study their potential links to breast cancer risk. We think that there are markers, or indicators, found in the body in the form of DNA methylation that can tell us about a person’s environmental exposures, including pesticides and plasticizers that can act as endocrine disruptors. The Markers for Environmental Exposures (MEE) study aims to discover such markers.
Enrollment has been completed for this study. Specimens and data are being analyzed. Thank you to all of our wonderful participants!
This study is funded by the California Breast Cancer Research Program, grant #22UB-2311, and the UC Irvine Anti-Cancer Challenge.
Read about the BPA project funded by the UCI Anti-Cancer Challenge.
Publications:
Lucia RM, Huang WL, Alvarez A, Masunaka I, Ziogas A, Goodman D, Odegaard AO, Norden-Krichmar TM, Park HL. Association of mammographic density with blood DNA methylation. Epigenetics. 2021 Jun 11:1-16. doi: 10.1080/15592294.2021.1928994
Park HL. Epigenetic biomarkers for environmental exposures and personalized breast cancer prevention. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. (2020) 17(4):1181. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17041181
Lucia RM, Huang W-L, Alvarez A, Thampy D, Elyasian M, Hidajat A, Yang K, Forman D, Pebdani A, Masunaka I, Brain S, Heditsian D, Lee V, Goodman D, Norden-Krichmar TM, Odegaard AO, Ziogas A, Park HL. Rationale, Study Design, and Cohort Characteristics for the Markers for Environmental Exposures (MEE) Study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. (2020) 17(5): 1774. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17051774
MEE Study Investigators: Drs. Argyrios Ziogas, Andy Odegaard, Hannah Lui Park, Deborah Goodman, and Trina Norden-Krichmar