PhD student: Maëlys Pernin-Schneider
Title: Diet and respiratory/allergic morbidity: follow-up of the PARIS cohort from birth to adolescence
Supervisors: Pr Isabelle Momas, Dr Fanny Rancière
Doctoral school: DS 393 Pierre Louis of Public Health in Paris: Epidemiology and Biomedical Information Sciences
Promotion: 2023
Funding: Doctoral contract
Thesis abstract: Over the last decades, the prevalence of allergic diseases has increased significantly throughout the world, even though the most recent studies report a stabilization or even a decrease in industrialized countries. These diseases are currently among the most frequent chronic disorders in children and the first years of life play a determining role in their etiology. Given the current prevalence of these diseases and their impact in terms of costs and quality of life, it is essential to identify their risk factors to implement effective prevention strategies from an early age.
Allergic diseases are multifactorial, influenced by both individual and environmental factors, which can also interact. Among the possible explanations put forward to explain their rapid increase in recent decades are changes in lifestyle, particularly in eating habits. However, the impact of diet on the occurrence of respiratory/allergic diseases is not clearly elucidated. The HERA team recently showed that infant feeding in the first year of life, as well as dietary habits at the age of 8/9 years, were associated with respiratory and allergic morbidity at school age in the PARIS birth cohort (PhD thesis by Hélène Amazouz 2018-2021). Questions arise about the impact of diet during adolescence, a pivotal period in the natural history of allergic diseases, often marked by a significant change in eating behaviours.
The general objective of this PhD project is to contribute to improving knowledge by studying the relationships between diet and allergic morbidity (asthma, allergic rhinitis, atopic dermatitis, food allergy, etc.) in children from the PARIS birth cohort prospectively followed up from birth to adolescence, continuing the work previously carried out by the team.
