(ANSA) – TURIN, SEPTEMBER 28 – An international study shows how, right from the cradle and in different urban contexts, children with a low socioeconomic status have healthier lifestyles, creating a disadvantage that will affect their health throughout their lives and that planners local and policy makers could consider. Turin is among the eleven European cities examined by the work, which involved over 60 thousand children and was conducted as part of the international Athlete and LifeCycle projects, to which Italy contributed with the data collected by the Ninfea project, coordinated by Tumor Epidemiology Unit of the City of Health of Turin and the University of Turin. The results were published in the scientific journal Social Science & Medicine and the other cities are Oslo, Copenhagen, Bristol, Bradford, Rotterdam, Nancy, Poitiers, Gipuzkoa, Sabadell, Valencia, heterogeneous urban contexts in terms of geographical location, administration, population, culture.
“The distribution of environmental risks and vulnerability to their effects vary between socioeconomic groups. The objective – states Costanza Pizzi, first author of the article – was to analyze the relationship between the socioeconomic position (SEP) of the child at birth and related characteristics to lifestyles and the urban environment in pre-school age (0-4 years), with the exposome approach”. The exposome, i.e. the totality of a person’s environmental exposures in life, is made up of a multitude of exposures from both external sources (chemical substances, air pollutants, lifestyle, diet) and internal sources (metabolism, inflammatory factors, microbiota ), many of which are interconnected. This study focused on the external exposome and the two Sep indicators examined were family income and maternal education level. In fact, early childhood is a key period in which inequalities in terms of possible external exposures (such as the type of diet, exposure to passive smoking and air pollution, use of green areas) can shape health trajectories in the course of life. Children with low Sep were breastfed less and revealed a reduced consumption of eggs, fish, fruit and vegetables; while the time spent in front of the TV, ownership of pets, exposure to passive smoking, consumption of dairy products, potatoes, sweet drinks, salty biscuits and chips, fats and carbohydrates were greater.
(ANSA).
2024-09-28 10:35:29