FIGURE 1.

(a) The exposome concept. The external exposome represents the sum of all environmental exposures including behavioural/lifestyle factors, whereas the internal exposome reflects all biological changes (viz. expression levels of biomolecules characterised by the transcriptome and epigenome, proteome, metabolome and lipidome) that are triggered by environmental factors. Exposome research is dedicated to the identification of associations between environmental exposures and health effects (e.g. disease and mortality). Redrawn from Vrijheid (2014) with permission (Copyright © BMJ Publishing Group Ltd & British Thoracic Society. All rights reserved) and modified from Daiber et al. (2019) with permission (© 2019 International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology). (b) The external exposome (e.g. mental stress and environmental pollution) confer changes of the internal exposome (e.g. altered circadian clock by forward/backward shift, stress hormones, inflammation and oxidative stress) leading to health risks and disease conditions (e.g. atherosclerosis, vascular stenosis and myocardial infarction)