NIH takes another shot at studying environment, child health

AURORA, CO - NOVEMBER 13: A child sits on the gym floor during the Shapedown program for overweight adolescents and children on November 13, 2010 in Aurora, Colorado. The 10-week family-centered program held by the Denver area Children's Hospital teaches youth and their parents ways to lead a healthier more active lifestyle, as a longer lasting weight-loss alternative to dieting. Nationally, some 15 percent of children are overweight or obese, as are some 60 percent of adults. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images) (2010 Getty Images)

The National Institutes of Health is launching a new project to help unravel how early-in-life environmental exposures may affect autism, obesity and certain other childhood disorders. It's a second shot at tackling those important questions, after a more ambitious research attempt failed.

The goal is "really to understand that interplay between the environment and genetics and behavior that play out to determine whether a child ends up healthy or not," said Dr. Francis Collins, the NIH's director.

Called ECHO, for Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes, the seven-year project will examine such interactions in pregnancy and early childhood, focusing on four areas of special public health concern: asthma and other airway disorders; obesity; neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism and learning disability; and birth defects and other infant health outcomes.

The project announced Monday is a next step after the failure of a massive earlier attempt to study how the environment and genetics interact in child health. The National Children's Study was supposed to eventually track 100,000 children from womb to adulthood. A year ago, Collins canceled that research, after years of planning and pilot-testing only to have scientific advisers conclude it was too unwieldy to work.

The ECHO project takes a different, and more streamlined, approach. Rather than starting from scratch to recruit participants, researchers with child health studies already under way can apply to expand them, using new technologies to measure even small environmental exposures that would be analyzed at NIH-designated labs. For example, an asthma study might use wearable monitors to uncover what triggers a child's asthma attacks, or compare air pollution sensors with inhaler use.

NIH said it plans to spend $160 million on ECHO research this year.