Saturday, August 29, 2015

Low-level arsenic exposure before birth associated with early puberty and obesity

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-08/nioe-lae082615.php

Public Release: 26-Aug-2015
Low-level arsenic exposure before birth associated with early puberty and obesity
NIH/National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

Female mice exposed in utero, or in the womb, to low levels of arsenic through drinking water displayed signs of early puberty and became obese as adults, according to scientists from the National Institutes of Health. The finding is significant because the exposure level of 10 parts per billion used in the study is the current U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standard, or maximum allowable amount, for arsenic in drinking water. The study, which appeared online August 21 in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, serves as a good starting point for examining whether low-dose arsenic exposure could have similar health outcomes in humans.

•••••

"We unexpectedly found that exposure to arsenic before birth had a profound effect on onset of puberty and incidence of obesity later in life," said NIEHS reproductive biologist and co-author Humphrey Yao, Ph.D. "Although these mice were exposed to arsenic only during fetal life, the impacts lingered through adulthood."

The impacts Yao is referring to are obesity and early onset puberty, particularly in female mice. The researchers did not examine in this study whether males also experienced early onset puberty, but they did confirm that male mice exposed to arsenic in utero also displayed weight gain as they aged. Both the low and high doses of arsenic resulted in weight gain.

•••••

"It's very important to study both high doses and low doses," said Linda Birnbaum, Ph.D., director of NIEHS and the National Toxicology Program. "Although the health effects from low doses were not as great as with the extremely high doses, the low-dose effects may have been missed if only high doses were studied."

No comments:

Post a Comment