Prenatal exposure to chemicals in consumer and industrial products is associated with increased liver disease in children
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The increased incidence of potentially cancer-causing liver disease in children is associated with prenatal exposure to several endocrine-disrupting chemicals, report Mount Sinai researchers.
This is the first comprehensive study of the association of prenatal exposure to these chemicals and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. The researchers used cytokeratin-18 as a new marker of disease in children. The findings, reported in JAMA Network Open in July, underscoring the importance of understanding prenatal exposure to environmental chemicals as a risk factor for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which is a rapidly growing problem in children that can lead to severe chronic liver disease and liver cancer in adulthood.
“These findings may inform more efficient early-life prevention and intervention strategies to address the current epidemic of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease,” said Vishal Midya, Ph.D., first author and postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health. and a member of the Mount Sinai Research Institute for Exposure at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Damaskini Valvi, MD, Ph.D., MPH, senior author, Assistant Professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health, and member of the Mount Sinai Research Institute for Exposure at Mount Sinai’s Icahn, adds, “We are all exposed to these chemicals every day through the food we eat. the food we eat, the water we drink, and the use of consumer products. These are serious public health concerns. These findings suggest that early life exposure to many endocrine-disrupting chemicals is a risk factor for pediatric non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and attracts attention for investigation. additional information is needed to elucidate how exposure to environmental chemicals may interact with genetic and lifestyle factors in the pathogenesis of liver disease.”
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is one of the most common liver diseases worldwide and is increasingly diagnosed in childhood—affecting 6 percent to 10 percent of the general pediatric population and approximately 34 percent of children with obesity. Endocrine disrupting chemicals are a broad class of environmental pollutants that include some pesticides, plastics, fire retardants, and toxic metals. Examples include perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as “forever chemicals” used in nonstick cookware and food packaging, and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) used as fire retardants in furniture and baby products. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals interfere with hormones and metabolic systems in humans. Several experimental studies have shown that exposure to this chemical can cause liver injury and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease; However, until now, the potential effects of prenatal mixed exposure to these chemicals have not been studied in humans.
In this study, researchers measured 45 chemicals in the blood or urine of 1,108 pregnant women from 2003 to 2010. These included endocrine disrupting chemicals such as PFAS, organochlorine and organophosphate pesticides, plasticizers (phenols, phthalates), PBDEs, and parabens. . When the children were 6 to 11 years old, the scientists measured the levels of enzymes and cytokeratin-18 that indicate the risk of liver disease in the children’s blood, finding elevated levels of these biomarkers in children who were more exposed to the environment. chemicals during pregnancy.
“By understanding the environmental factors that accelerate fatty liver disease, we can reduce people’s risk by providing them with actionable information to make informed choices that reduce the risk or impact of the disease,” says Robert Wright, MD, MPH, Ethel H. Environmental Medicine and Public Health and Co-Director of the Institute for Exposomic Research at Icahn Mount Sinai. “Exposomics is the wave of the future because once you sequence the human genome, which has been done, there’s not much else you can do in genomics alone. The missing piece of the puzzle for us to understand different diseases is to quantify their environmental causes, and exosomics is a way to accelerate our knowledge of how the environment affects our health.”
Study participants were enrolled in the Human Early-Life Exposome project, a collaborative network of six ongoing population-based prospective birth cohort studies from six European countries—France, Greece, Lithuania, Norway, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Limitations of this study include the inability to perform a liver biopsy, which is considered the gold standard for establishing a causal relationship with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, due to risks and ethical limitations due to the age of the children.
Study on PFA and fatty liver disease: Women are more affected than men
JAMA Network Open (2022). jamanetwork.com/journals/jaman … tworkopen.2022.20176
Provided by Mount Sinai Hospital
Quote: Exposure to chemicals in consumers and industrial products before birth is associated with increased liver disease in children (2022, 6 July), retrieved 6 July 2022 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-07-prenatal-exposure- chemicals-consumer -industri.html
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