Study objective: The Vesta project aims to assess the role of traffic related air pollution in the occurrence of childhood asthma. Design and setting: Case-control study conducted in five French metropolitan areas between 1998 and 2000. A set of 217 pairs of matched 4 to 14 years old cases and controls were investigated. An index of lifelong exposure to traffic exhausts was constructed, using retrospective information on traffic density close to all home and school addresses since birth; this index was also calculated for the 0-3 years age period to investigate the effect of early exposures. Main results: Adjusted on environmental tobacco smoke, personal and parental allergy, and several confounders, lifelong exposure was not associated with asthma. In contrast, associations before age of 3 were significant: odds ratios for tertiles 2 and 3 of the exposure index, relative to tertile 1, exhibited a positive trend (1.48 (95%CI = 0.7 to 3.0) and 2.28 (1.1 to 4.6)), with greater odds ratios among subjects with positive skin prick tests. Conclusions: These results suggest that traffic related pollutants might have contributed to the asthma epidemic that has taken place during the past decades among children.

To investigate whether factors influencing ovarian function affect risk of uterine leiomyomata, we examined prospectively the association of new diagnoses confirmed by ultrasound or hysterectomy with body mass index, weight change, height, and cigarette smoking among 94,095 premenopausal women with intact uteri, who were ages 25-42 years at the start of follow-up in 1989. We assessed body mass index and cigarette smoking from responses on the study questionnaire completed just before diagnosis. During 322,775 person-years, 2,967 new cases of uterine leiomyomata confirmed by ultrasound or hysterectomy were reported. Risk among all cases confirmed by ultrasound or hysterectomy increased with increasing adult body mass index. The multivariate relative risks (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) according to body mass index categories of <20.0, 20.0-21.9, 22.0-23.9, 24.0-25.9, 26.0-27.9, 28.0-29.9, and > or =30.0 were 0.90 (95% CI = 0.79-1.03), 1.00 (referent), 1.08 (95% CI = 0.97-1.21), 1.16 (95% CI = 1.03-1.31), 1.21 (95% CI = 1.05-1.40), 1.36 (95% CI = 1.16-1.59), and 1.23 (95% CI = 1.09-1.39), respectively. The RRs for hysterectomy-confirmed cases generally were higher. Similarly, risk was positively associated with weight gain since age 18 years. Body mass index at age 18 years, height, and cigarette smoking were unrelated to risk of uterine leiomyomata. Elevated adult body mass index is associated with a modest increased risk of uterine leiomyomata among premenopausal women.