Kenneth Vanbrabant

Hasselt University · Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences

The effects of ultrafine particle (UFP) inhalation on neurodevelopment, especially during critical windows of early life, remain largely unexplored. The specific time windows during which exposure to UFP might be the most detrimental remain poorly understood. Here, we studied early-life exposure to clean ultrafine carbonaceous particles (UFPC) and...

Background Evidence is accumulating that elevated levels of particulate air pollution, including black carbon, have been linked to gastrointestinal disorders and a lower intestinal bacterial richness and diversity. One of the hypothesized underlying mechanisms is the absorption of air pollution-related particles from the gastrointestinal tract. Me...

Importance Ambient air pollution is a worldwide problem, not only related to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases but also to neurodegenerative disorders. Different pathways on how air pollutants could affect the brain are already known, but direct evidence of the presence of ambient particles (or nanoparticles) in the human adult brain is limit...

Background/Aim Human breast milk is the recommended source of nutrition for infants due to its complex composition and numerous benefits, including a decline in infection rates in childhood and a lower risk of obesity. Hence, it is crucial that environmental pollutants in human breast milk are minimized. Exposure to black carbon (BC) particles has...

Background Particulate matter (PM) is a major environmental health concern and there is growing evidence that early exposure to PM can have adverse effects on neurobehavioral development in children, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In this study, we hypothesized that prenatal PM2.5 expos...

Background DNA methylation programming is sensitive to prenatal life environmental influences, but the impact of maternal exposure to green space on newborns DNA methylation has not been studied yet. Methods We conducted a meta-epigenome-wide association study (EWAS) of maternal exposure to green space during gestation with cord blood DNA methylat...

Background Mitochondria play an important role in the energy metabolism and are susceptible to environmental pollution. Prenatal air pollution exposure has been linked with childhood obesity. Placental mtDNA mutations have been associated with prenatal particulate matter exposure and MT-ND4L10550A>G heteroplasmy has been associated with BMI in adul...

Background Ambient fine particulate matter (PM < 2.5 μm, PM 2.5 ) is gaining increasing attention as an environmental risk factor for health. The kidneys are considered a particularly vulnerable target to the toxic effects that PM 2.5 exerts. Alteration of kidney function may lead to a disrupted homeostasis, affecting disparate tissues in the body....

Edible marine algae, or seaweeds, are a rich source of several bioactive compounds including phytosterols, carotenoids, and polysaccharides. Over the last decades, seaweed-derived constituents turned out to not only reside in the systemic circulation, but are able to cross the blood-brain barrier to exert neuro-active functions both in homeostatic...

Enhancing the cholesterol turnover in the brain via activation of liver x receptors can restore memory in a mouse model for Alzheimer’s disease. The edible Asian brown alga Sargassum fusiforme (Hijiki) contains high amounts of oxysterols such as (3β, 24ξ)-stigmasta-5, 28-dien-3, 24-diol (24[R, S]-saringosterol) that are a potent liver x receptor ag...