🔴💣MALATTIE E DISTURBI DEL NEUROSVILUPPO, IL RUOLO DEI VELENI CUI SIAMO SOTTOPOSTI QUOTIDIANAMENTE

We are with Dr. Ernesto Burgio, we are in Urbino, at the Epigenetics Convention, but we are already looking at the 2020 edition, 2020 in which we will talk about neurodevelopmental diseases, and also, however, in this edition we will compare on the latest points of view on very varied topics. What is coming out and how do we plan for the next year? First of all, I think it is essential to define the field. We should not talk about neurodevelopmental diseases, we should talk about neurodevelopmental disorders, and this is important because disorder means something that has to do with the way in which the neural networks of the child are disturbed in the first phase of life. Why is it important? Because the old exception, unfortunately still dominant in many areas, according to which autism, for example, and other neurodevelopmental disorders exist and are to be fought with an old logic, that of the drug, all this should be linked to the past. Because what we are understanding, instead, and what we are trying to make our colleagues understand, is that epigenetics, this new way of studying the genome, allows us to understand that there are many factors of disturbance that act during the fetal life, that act in the first 1,000 days of life, disturbing what is called fetal programming of various tissues and organs, but in particular of the brain or, better, of the neural networks of the child. Let me explain. The fetal maternal stress, the excess of pesticides in food chains, the atmospheric pollution of large cities, maternal inflammations interfere with fetal development, in particular with the development of the neural networks of the fetus. All this can be absolutely recognized, it must be recognized increasingly early, it can lead to significant strategies of primary prevention, it can lead to the fact that these disorders, which, unfortunately, are spreading all over the north of the world, there is talk of a prevalence of autism, roughly, of a child out of 40 in the United States, while up to 30 years ago there was talk of a child out of 1,500. There is now talk of a child out of 5 who has a neurodevelopmental disorder. Also in our country there is talk of a child out of 100 with autism spectrum disorders. All this can be drastically reduced if we talk in terms of epigenetics. Epigenetics, therefore, means, and it is very different, not a damaged DNA, not a genetic disease, it means a programming disorder, it can be prevented, it can be, to a certain extent, solved if these disorders are known. It will depend a lot on us, it will depend above all, and this is why it is nice that Urbino has been meeting for six years and that we meet among various professionals. It means, above all, making sure that gynecologists, neonatologists, pediatricians, children's neuropsychiatrists, psychologists, teachers and parents know, work together in a different mode of approach to this field of disorders, I insist, and not of pathologies.