# Long-term sequelae of early life pesticide exposure in the CHAMACOS birth cohort

> **NIH NIH UH3** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY · 2020 · $499,980

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
 The Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS) is a longitudinal
birth cohort of ~600 primarily first-generation Mexican American children living in the agricultural Salinas
Valley, California.
CHAMACOS was formed with the same intent as ECHO: to examine the association of early
life environmental exposures with birth outcomes, neurodevelopment, respiratory health, and obesity.
We have
followed children from in utero through adolescence and we now propose to follow them into adulthood.
 Over the past 17 years, we have developed effective strategies to enroll, track, and retain study
participants in this low-income Latino population; we have succeeded in collecting high quality data on all four
endpoints of focus for ECHO; we have collected, processed, shipped, and stored over 150,000 varied
biological and environmental samples; we have measured over 100 chemical exposures; we have helped
develop and test sophisticated and novel exposure, genetic, and epigenetic laboratory assays; and we have
developed a solid community-university partnership, earning the trust of participants and community
stakeholders. Thus, CHAMACOS could serve as a model birth cohort for ECHO, rare in its length and breadth
of assessment of children from birth to adulthood,
offering valuable methodologies, lessons learned, and
opportunities to the larger ECHO consortium. In addition, CHAMACOS contributes
to ECHO a select, high-risk
population of Latino children in a farmworker community
. As 60% of this cohort is overweight or obese, we also
offer data on children at high risk of metabolic, cardiovascular, and liver disease.
Because
the
CHAMACOS
children are approaching adulthood, we
are uniquely positioned to examine the early origins of adult disease
and address important gaps in the relationship between early life exposures and multiple health endpoints.
 We have reported that in utero organophosphate pesticide (OP) exposure is associated with poorer
attention and executive function, lower IQ, respiratory symptoms, and poorer lung function at school-age. In
the UG3 phase, we aim to test new methods that will expand our understanding of these relationships and
contribute cutting-edge methodologies to ECHO. We propose to: 1) examine a newly-studied epigenetic
modification, hydroxyl-methylcytosine (5-hmC) – a potentially strong candidate for understanding the molecular
mechanisms underlying effects on neurodevelopment; and 2) apply near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRs) for
functional neuroimaging – an inexpensive and convenient alternative to functional MRI. In the UH3 phase, we
propose to follow-up participants at age 18 and 21 to assess the effects of in utero and early childhood
exposure to agricultural pesticides on: 1) neurobehavioral endpoints; 2) respiratory symptoms and function;
and 3) body mass and related metabolic and cardiovascular conditions. This valuable cohort has the potential
to add rich data, validated protocols, a...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9899747
- **Project number:** 5UH3ES030631-04
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY
- **Principal Investigator:** Brenda Eskenazi
- **Activity code:** UH3 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $499,980
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2016-09-21 → 2023-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9899747

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9899747, Long-term sequelae of early life pesticide exposure in the CHAMACOS birth cohort (5UH3ES030631-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-21 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9899747. Licensed CC0.

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