The Ninth World Congress of the Society for the Developmental Origins of Health in Cape Town, South Africa will provide 3.5 days of scientific meetings for scientists, toxicologists, clinical researchers, obstetricians, pediatricians, public health professionals, environmental health scientists, and policy leaders from around the world. A one-day satellite meeting has been organized with 6-8 speakers on the topic of Development Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD), Environment, and Sexual Dimorphism. Funds are being sought from NIEHS to help defray the costs for this satellite meeting. In past DOHaD meetings, sex-specific preconception and antenatal environmental exposures on later offspring health was greatly under-represented, even though abundant evidence links early exposure to these factors and later sex-dependent DOHaD effects and so were talks on environmental chemicals. Sex/Gender inequities research tends to focus on documenting disparities but often fails to consider the underpinning mechanisms. This proposed satellite meeting directly ties into the general mission of NIEHS to understand how environment chemicals/pollutants affect human health in a sex-dependent manner with the ultimate goal of improving the health for both sexes throughout the lifespan. The main goal of the satellite meeting will be to examine how various preconception and antenatal factors may lead to later sex-dependent outcomes with the emphasis being on environmental chemical exposures. To determine if there are overlapping endpoints/mechanisms, related talks on nutrition and stress will be included. Perinatal environmental chemical exposures may also coincide with nutritional disorders/stress, and early environmental changes may result in greater vulnerability/resilience to later stressors, i.e. the the two-hit idea.
Specific aims will thus be to: 1) Raise awareness of how preconception and ante-natal factors can perturb offspring sexually dimorphic phenotypes. This approach will presumably reinforce the notion that both sexes must be considered in biomedical sciences research, epidemiological studies, and clinical trials. 2) Explore underpinning mechanisms of such sexually dimorphic phenotypic outcomes in a range of systems. These include metabolic, reproductive, neurobehavioral, and placental responses following environmental alterations to the mother or father and how they impact the fetus and, relative roles of sex chromosomes, epigenetics, and sex hormones throughout the lifespan and across the generations. The talks will likely provide a bridge between how various environmental chemical exposures and other maternal/paternal/ancestral factors lead to DOHaD effects, and thereby, inform attendees of the prevailing thoughts on potential overlapping mechanisms, prevention, and remediation strategies. 3) Explore knowledge gaps in the DOHaD field and stimulate questions by incorporating an Introduction, Discussion, and Closing statements/General synopsis of the satellite meeting. Attendant goals will be to foster collaborations for delegates presumably representing various disciplines, who would thus likely not otherwise meet, and promote the career development of junior faculty in these areas.
The factors that a mother or father is exposed prior to mating and during the ante-natal period in the case of the mother can have dramatic effects on later offspring health. To address the complex factors, especially environmental chemical exposures, that influence the health of the child in a sex-dependent manner, the mechanisms by which this occurs, and potential strategies to prevent and reverse these effects, the 'DOHaD Environment and Sexual Dimorphism' satellite meeting will be held as part of the Ninth World Congress of the Society for the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) in Cape Town, South Africa November 8- 11, 2015. The overall goal of the satellite meeting will be thus to inform attendees on the current thoughts of sex differences in the overlapping mechanisms between environmental chemical exposure, parental diet, and stress, prevention and remediation strategies to combat these early precipitating factors, and foster new collaborations amongst the satellite meeting attendees.
