The Childhood and Environment Research Group, comprised of members of the Hospital del Mar Paediatrics Service, is dedicated to research related to childhood and its environments, from the foetus (mother’s womb) to the child’s environment (air, settings, school, etc).

The involvement in research projects for more than 10 years has had significant results as regards publications. The Group is currently working on projects related to asthma (AMICS project) and drugs (Meconio project), in addition to projects branching off from these, especially the study of unconventional matrices, such as biomarkers of foetal and child exposure to drugs and its clinical effects.

Overall, this activity has led to some unique scientific contributions: 

• Description of neonatal abstinence syndrome related to nicotine;
• Description of the association between maternal consumption of methadone and neonatal thrombocytosis;
• Viability study on different viruses (HBV, HCV and HIV) in discarded syringes;
• Study on drugs in meconium;
• Proposal of milk teeth as a new unconventional biological matrix;
• Proposal of medication simplification in paediatric CPR;
• Study of all the biomarkers of foetal exposure to tobacco (mother’s and baby’s hair, urine, cord blood, meconium and milk teeth);
• Description of ciliary alterations in newborns prenatally exposed to heroine and methadone;
• Monitoring up to 6 years of age of the AMICS cohort regarding the relation between environmental factors and the evolution to asthma.