The UPRISE project will study the mechanisms by which air pollution, particularly ultrafine particles (UFP) and micro and nanoplastics (MNP), alter the normal development of the foetus in pregnant women and increase the risk of pregnancy complications. The initiative, coordinated by the La Fe Health Research Institute of Valencia, involves 14 health and environmental institutions from 8 countries, among which the University of Valencia is providing data privacy support.
UPRISE will deploy exposure databases and assessment models for the above pollutants in different exposure scenarios to improve the understanding of their sources, concentrations and dispersion patterns. It will also include a clinical study with pregnant participants exposed to different levels of UFP and MNP contamination to analyse possible modes of action leading to noncommunicable diseases in adulthood and identify possible key events.
Thanks to biological sampling of maternal blood, umbilical cord blood and placental tissue, biomarkers of exposure and pathophysiological effects will be sought to study adverse effects on foetal development and birth. Thus, causal models supported by weight-of-evidence analyses will be developed to demonstrate the link between contaminant uptake and the events triggering the noncommunicable diseases of interest.
Through the IRTIC's Computer Security, Data Protection and Privacy research line, created and directed by Professor Ricard Martínez, tasks will be carried out to ensure proper regulatory compliance with the project. Martínez attended the initial project consortium meeting held on Monday 10th February at La Fe Hospital in Valencia.
The study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the consequences that air pollution can have on pregnancy and premature birth. In the long term, it aims to gain political support for new regulations that contribute to the protection and improvement of health, increasing the life expectancy of the population.
The initiative will implement user-friendly tools for reporting and sharing data with the aim of facilitating the integration of scientific evidence into the updating of European and national air quality standards. By advancing the quantification of the public health impact of prenatal air pollution exposure and providing guidelines and decision-support tools for policy makers, the study will contribute to reducing the burden of noncommunicable diseases associated with preterm birth and other forms of adverse birth outcomes.
A total of 14 health and environmental institutions from 8 countries are involved in the project, which has one million euros of funding from the HORIZON-2024 programme. The consortium is composed of the University of Valencia, the Technological Institute of Packaging, Transport and Logistics of Valencia, the Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology of the University of Tampere (Finland), QSAR Laboratory of Gdansk (Poland), the environmental consultancy AXON of Athens (Greece), the Hasselt University of Belgium, the European Newborn Foundation of Munich (Germany), the National Public Health Organisation ETHNIKOS in Athens and the Department of Applied and Environmental Physics of the Faculty of Physics of Thessaloniki (Greece), the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory in Braga (Portugal), the Finnish Institute of Health and Welfare in Helsinki (Finland) and the Swiss Federal Laboratory for Materials Science and Technology in Dübendorf (Switzerland).
