**9. Conclusions**

The findings of our studies suggest that in addition to environmental and/or occupational exposure to different hazards and lifestyle factors, the genetic factors and the interactions between different genotypes, between genotypes and lifestyle factors and between genotypes and environmental/occupational exposure to hazards may have an important influence on the development of diseases and should be further investigated [6, 130–133]. In agreement with our observations, an increasing number of molecular epidemiological studies support the importance of investigating not only genetic predisposition but also gene-gene and geneenvironment interactions when assessing the risk of developing diseases [134–136]. Novel high-throughput technologies may also allow the investigation of interactions between exposure to hazards and epigenetic changes in disease risk assessment [137].
