Humans are exposed daily to a wide range of chemicals found in the air, food, water and the surrounding environment, but understanding how these substances affect health remains complex and difficult.
A new scientific study published in the journal Nature Communications offers a different perspective that helps explain this complexity. The study was conducted by researchers from the Centre for Molecular Medicine (CeMM) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Network Medicine at the University of Vienna. The study's core idea is to understand the effects of chemicals through their functions within the body, not just through their chemical structure
The researchers analyzed nearly 10,000 environmental exposures, including pollutants, food components, and medications. Instead of classifying these substances by source or chemical structure, they studied how they affect human genes, then constructed a comprehensive map linking these exposures according to their shared biological effects.
This approach reveals that substances completely different in composition may produce the same effect within the body, while chemically similar substances may cause completely different results.
The study showed that exposures cluster into groups associated with specific biological functions such as inflammation, metabolism, or blood clotting. Within these groups, we may find substances that are chemically unrelated but affect the same biological pathways.
This means that the body does not respond to substances based on their external form, but rather based on the biological system with which they interact within the cells.
The researchers also studied how these substances affect protein networks within cells, which are the networks that regulate most of the body's vital processes.
They found that certain proteins play a pivotal role because they control a large number of processes. When chemicals target these proteins, their impact is much greater because the disruption spreads through a vast network of interactions within the cell. Thus, the more central the biological target, the greater the potential for damage.
The researchers compared their findings with health and environmental data from several European countries, and found that areas with higher levels of certain exposures also recorded higher rates of related diseases at the molecular level.
This suggests that understanding the relationship between exposures and disease through "biological distance" within networks may help in predicting health risks more accurately.
This study offers a new way to understand the relationship between the environment and human health. Instead of studying each chemical in isolation, it allows us to view them as part of a complex network of interconnected effects within the body.
This approach may contribute in the future to the discovery of unclear environmental risks, improved pollution monitoring, and the development of better strategies for preventing diseases before they occur.
