As the first ever joint university-INERIS research unit, the PeriTox UMR-I 01 unit was founded in 2008 on the basis of a university group that had been accredited by the French government since 1992. It includes 43 permanent staff (including 20 university- or hospital-based lecturers and researchers, and 8 INERIS researchers) and around 15 PhD students and postdocs.
The unit generates synergy between its human and technical resources and its complementary, interdisciplinary skills by bringing together physiologists, biologists, toxicologists, paediatricians and gynaecologists to work on a major research theme: the effects of chemical and physical environmental toxics on a child’s health. To the best of our knowledge, PeriTox is the world’s only research unit working on these aspects of health and the environment in children via an integrated analysis of the body’s main physiological functions.

Our scientific challenge fits into the “developmental origin of health and disease” (DOHaD) concept and the “exposome” concept; both have been included in France’s National Environmental Health Plan and its 2016 Modern Healthcare Act.

PeriTox studies the short and long-term impacts of perinatal exposure to toxic factors (pesticides) and physical factors (notably the electromagnetic fields (EMFs) generated by mobile phones, and moderate thermal stress) in the environment on the health of newborns and young children – particularly the effects on vital physiological functions involved in maintaining the energy balance (sleep, thermoregulation, respiration, digestion, etc.).

These effects may be exacerbated in premature infants and/or those having experienced in utero growth restriction (IUGR); this emphasizes the importance of the foetal development phase and the onset of exposure during development. We analyse the effects of chronic, “low”-level perinatal exposure from conception onwards, which is as coherent as possible with what is known about real exposure. These studies fit it the DOHaD concept and the “exposome” concept of disease.
These studies are performed in a coherent, complementary manner by working on the human newborn, in vitro systems and in silico models, from bench to bed and back again. Our approaches range from exposure assessment, molecular biology and cell biology to integrated physiology. We notably use innovative, stress-free and/or contact-free tools suited to the newborn’s status and size, as well as models that avoid the performance of experiments on animals or human (an artificial intestine, a thermal mannequin, etc.).

 

Since the unit’s creation, technological developments have enabled us to model the thermal exchanges between a newborn and its environment in great detail. We have designed and validated two unique thermal mannequins. These models have driven a fruitful collaboration with the French incubator manufacturer Médiprema since the 1990s. This collaboration prompted the joint foundation of the Peritherm Laboratory by the Jules Verne University of Picardie, Amiens University Hospital and Médiprema in 2010.