Sathyanarayana Lab

Studying How Chemicals Affect Children

The Sathyanarayana Lab investigates how chemicals in our environment impact children, and develops ways to reduce chemical exposures and help families lead healthier lives.

The lab’s current research looks at how endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as phthalates, that are in our general environment and everyday products, affect how children develop, starting with babies in the womb. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals are found in many everyday products, including some cosmetics, food and beverage packaging, toys, building materials, and pesticides. These chemicals can affect hormones in the body that are important for growth and development.

We are part of a multicenter research team that found that phthalates can adversely affect how male genitals develop, increasing the risk of future reproductive problems. We are now working on several studies to investigate how endocrine-disrupting chemicals affect children’s respiratory health and neurodevelopment, as well as to understand the biological pathways through which these chemicals affect health. In addition, we are interested in understanding prenatal and early childhood factors that may protect against the effects of chemical exposures.

Watch Dr. Sathyanarayana discuss the dangers of environmental chemicals.

Explore Our Research

Helping families avoid chemicals

Our research is an extension of Dr. Sheela Sathyanarayana’s clinical and policy work. As a pediatrician at Seattle Children’s Hospital and the University of Washington, Sathyanarayana counsels families on how to reduce chemicals in their lives. She also co-directs the University of Washington’s Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit, where she educates physicians and residents about how environmental exposures affect health – and on ways to incorporate this evidence into clinical practice.

Promoting policies that reduce chemical exposures

On the policy front, Sathyanarayana constantly seeks new ways to translate research into policies that improve children’s lives. She co-chaired the Environmental Protection Agency’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee for four years and served on a National Academies of Science Committee that examines the health impacts of endocrine-disrupting chemical exposures. These positions enable her to work with policy makers to improve regulations and protect children from chemicals’ harmful effects.

Dr. Sathyanarayana’s policy-related positions have included:

• Past Committee member, National Academies of Science Committee to examine the effects of low dose endocrine disruptor chemical toxicity
• Past co-chair, Academic Pediatrics Association, Environmental Health Special Interest Group
• Past elected member, appointed co-chair and appointed chair, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee
• Past appointed liaison, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Science Advisory Board

To learn more about these studies and our overall research, please email Marnie Hazlehurst.

ECHO-MEND

Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) | Mediators and Modifiers of Prenatal Environmental Exposures and Child Neurodevelopment (MEND)

The MEND study builds upon the PATHWAYS GAPPS study as part of the NIH ECHO program to study how a range of environmental factors in early development influence the health of children and adolescents.

Read more about ECHO-MEND.

TIDES

The Infant Development and Environment Study

The TIDES study is a multi-center pregnancy cohort was originally funded to investigate associations between phthalate exposures in pregnancy and reproductive outcomes in children.

Read more about TIDES.

Melamine & Cyanuric Acid Exposure and Kidney Injury in Children

In 2018 we received additional funding to build on the work of the PATHWAYS GAPPS project and learn more about the impact of chemical exposures. Specifically, the funding will support additional analysis of urine collected from children at the GAPPS study visits to measure levels of melamine and cyanuric acid, which have been linked to kidney injury in children. This relationship and impact on child health had only been examined in studies outside of the United States at the time of funding.

Melamine is used to make industrial and household products including tableware, laminates, and adhesives, and cyanuric acid is used in bleach, chlorination systems, or as a nitrogen source in animal feed. Given the numerous potential sources of exposure, melamine and cyanuric acid exposures may be ubiquitous in the general population. Exposures likely occur from ingestion through the use of melamine tableware/plastics and/or from food and beverage contamination, but sources of exposure for children in the general population have not been investigated in epidemiologic studies. The knowledge gained from this study could inform policy and public health prevention efforts to reduce exposures in children, reducing the risk for kidney injury and future kidney disease.

Developing a remote assessment to measure cognitive stimulation

Dr. Cindy Trevino is the Principal Investigator of an NIH ECHO-funded supplement in which we are developing a remote measure to assess cognitive stimulation in a child’s home environment using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and smartphone video recordings of parent-child interactions. Cognitive stimulation in early childhood refers to the quality and quantity of enriching learning experiences and activities available to a child in the home environment, and is positively associated with cognition, academic outcomes, and executive function. Cognitive stimulation has also been found to moderate the impact of environmental exposures on cognitive and behavior. This points to a promising pathway for intervention and targeted caregiver-focused interventions to promote cognitive stimulation in early childhood to buffer or offset the effects of prenatal exposure to environmental chemicals.

We have a manuscript under review describing the feasibility of developing a reliable 10-item cognitive stimulation scale derived from secondary data analysis using Home Observation Measurement of the Environment Infant/Toddler (HOME-IT) data from three NIH ECHO cohorts (Trevino et al., under review). Dr. Trevino has also received internal funding from the Seattle Children’s Research Institute to enhance our validation sample and expand this 10-item cognitive stimulation scale for Spanish-speaking families.

Identifying patterns of child health outcomes in a large multi-cohort study

Dr. Drew Day is the Principal Investigator of an NIH ECHO-funded supplement in which we are validating and then applying clustering methods to examine how pediatric outcomes collected across respiratory, obesity-related, and neurodevelopmental domains co-occur, with the aim of identifying subpopulations of children with high levels of multiple adverse outcomes and then examining predictors of membership in those subpopulations.

Prenatal Environmental Reproductive Hormone Concentrations (PERCH)

The TIDES study found that phthalate exposure can cause babies to be born with an unusually long – or short – distance between their genitals and anus. This may indicate that phthalate exposure affects how reproductive organs develop.

PERCH takes a closer look at this phenomenon, with hopes of pinpointing how phthalates alter reproductive development. The study uses data and specimens from TIDES participants to investigate the role of prenatal sex steroid hormones as a link between first trimester phthalate exposure and newborn anogenital distance (AGD).