Department of Medicine, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, New York (Dr Thatcher, Dr Sime, Dr Phipps, and Dr Utell); Department of Environmental Medicine, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, New York (Dr Woeller, Dr Sime, Dr Phipps, and Dr Utell); Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, New York (Dr Thakar, Dr Khan, Dr Sime, and Dr Phipps); Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, New York (Dr Thakar and Dr Khan); Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, New York (Dr Hopke); Center for Air Resources Engineering and Science, Clarkson University, Potsdam, New York (Dr Hopke); Clinical Biomarkers Laboratory, Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Department of Medicine, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia (Dr Smith, Dr Uppal, Dr Walker, Dr Go, and Dr Jones); Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York (Dr Walker); Department of Preventive Medicine and Biostatistics, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland (Dr Krahl and Dr Mallon); Department of Internal Medicine, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia (Dr Thatcher and Dr Sime).
Address correspondence to: Thomas H. Thatcher, PhD, Department of Internal Medicine, Virginia Commonwealth University, 1220 E Broad St, Box 980050, Richmond, VA 23298 ([email protected]).
Authors’ contributions: All authors contributed to the study design and data analysis plan. THT, CFW, JT, and AK performed the initial data analysis, which was then reviewed and commented on by all authors. THT and JT assembled the figures and tables. THT wrote the initial draft of the manuscript. All authors had the opportunity to comment on and revise the manuscript, and all authors approved the final version.
Funding: This work was supported in part by The Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, Inc. grant no. HT9404-13-1-0030, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences grant no. P30ES01247, and NIH training grant no. T32HL066988. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the Uniformed Services University, the U.S. Department of Defense, Clarkson University or the University of Rochester.
Clinical significance: This work demonstrates the feasibility of using postdeployment serum samples to retrospectively identify environmental exposures that occurred during deployment in warfighters. This has broad applicability to enable retrospective assessment of occupational exposures on an individual level when contemporaneous environmental and personal monitoring is inadequate.
Conflicts of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest.
Supplemental digital contents are available for this article. Direct URL citation appears in the printed text and is provided in the HTML and PDF versions of this article on the journal's Web site (www.joem.org).
