Bisphenol en zwangerschap*
Uit twee studies blijkt dat blootstelling aan Bisphenol A tijdens de zwangerschap problemen kan geven bij de nakomelingen. Ze kunnen agressiever worden en hebben een grotere kans op astma. (Bisphenol A is een chemische stof die wordt gebruikt voor de productie van polycarbonaat, een transparante plastic die onder andere gebruikt wordt als drager van CD's en DVD's en voor onbreekbare flessen voor (baby)voeding, voor tafelbestek, en voorwerpen voor gebruik in microgolfovens. Het wordt ook gebruikt in epoxyharsen die als beschermende coating aan de binnenkant van voedingsverpakkingen in blik of karton worden aangebracht, of in leidingen en reservoirs voor drinkwater. Bisfenol A wordt ook gebruikt in vlamvertragende middelen, ook in tandvullingen en als oplosmiddel voor drukinkten. Bisphenol komt voornamelijk het lichaam binnen door eten en drinken, maar ook door het inademen van huisstof.)
BPA Plastic Chemical Linked to Aggression, Hyperactivity in Toddlers
Prenatal exposure to the endocrine-disrupting chemical bisphenol A (BPA) may increase aggressive behavior in toddler girls, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
Researchers measured bodily levels of BPA in 249 pregnant women, then followed their daughters for two years. Children who had been exposed to the highest levels of the chemical before the 16th week of gestation had significantly higher scores on tests for aggression than girls of the same age with less
exposure.
The study is the first to examine the effect of BPA on behavior in human children. It is consistent with the results of prior animal studies, which have also found that BPA can affect the brain and reproductive system. The National Toxicology Program concluded in 2008 that there was evidence to support the chemical's effects on human children.
Because BPA mimics the effect of estrogen, which plays a critical role in the male brain during the 11th and 12th weeks of pregnancy, researchers believe that the chemical might be "masculinizing" the female
brain.
"In the developing brain, timing is everything," said neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, author of The Female Brain.
"I'm worried that tiny amounts of this stuff, given at just the wrong time, could partly masculinize the female brain."
Although the study found no change in male behavior and no increase in behavioral disorders among girls, scientists noted that the population effects may be much greater than those seen in the study. Michelle Macias, spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, noted that children in the study came from predominantly well-educated families, which tend to have lower aggression and hyperactivity rates than the average. In addition, neurologist David Bellinger noted that a population can become more aggressive as a whole without there being strong observable effects in individual
children.
The researchers intend to continue studying the children until the age of five.
UTMB: Mother's exposure to BPA increases risks of asthma in her children
Mouse experiments implicate common ingredient in plastic water bottles and food packaging
For years, scientists have warned of the possible negative health effects of bisphenol A, a chemical used to make everything from plastic water bottles and food packaging to sunglasses and CDs. Studies have linked BPA exposure to reproductive disorders, obesity, abnormal brain development as well as breast and prostate cancers, and in January the Food and Drug Administration announced that it was concerned about "the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and young children."
Now, mouse experiments by University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers have produced evidence that a mother's exposure to BPA may also increase the odds that her children will develop asthma. Using a well-established mouse model for asthma, the investigators found that the offspring of female mice exposed to BPA showed significant signs of the disorder, unlike those of mice shielded from BPA.
"We gave BPA in drinking water starting a week before pregnancy, at levels calculated to produce a body concentration that was the same as that in a human mother, and continued on through the pregnancy and lactation periods," said UTMB associate professor Terumi Midoro-Horiuti, lead author of a paper on the study appearing in the Environmental Health Perspectives.
Four days after birth, the researchers sensitized the baby mice with an allergy-provoking ovalbumin injection, followed by a series of daily respiratory doses of ovalbumin, the main protein in egg white. The investigators then measured levels of antibodies against ovalbumin and quantities of inflammatory white blood cells known as eosinophils in the lungs of the mouse pups. They also used two different methods to measure lung function.
"What we were looking for is the asthma response to a challenge, something like what might happen if you had asthma and got pollen in your nose or lungs, you might have an asthma attack," said UTMB professor Randall Goldblum, also an author of the paper. "All four of our indicators of asthma response showed up in the BPA group, much more so than in the pups of the nonexposed mice."
The UTMB researchers said that although more work is needed to determine the precise mechanism of that response, it almost certainly has its roots in the property of BPA thought to contribute to other health problems: its status as an "environmental estrogen." Environmental estrogens are natural or artificial chemicals from outside the body that when consumed mimic the hormone estrogen, activating its powerful biochemical signaling networks in often dangerous ways. In a 2007 Environmental Health Perspectives paper, for example, Midoro-Horiuti, Goldblum and UTMB professor and current study co-author Cheryl Watson described how adding small amounts of environmental estrogens into cultures of human and mouse mast cells - common immune cells packed with allergic response-inducing chemicals such as histamine - produced a sudden release of allergy-promoting substances.
"Our results show that we have to consider the possible impact of environmental estrogens on normal immune development and on the development and morbidity of immunologic diseases such as asthma," Midoro-Horiuti said. "We also need to look at doing more epidemiological studies directly in humans, which is possible because BPA is so prevalent in the environment - all of us are already loaded with it to a varying extent. For example, it should be possible to determine if children who have more BPA exposure are more likely to develop asthma."
In addition to Midoro-Horiuti, Goldblum and Watson, UTMB postdoctoral fellow Ruby Tiwari is also an author of the paper, titled "Maternal Bisphenol A Exposure Promotes the Development of Experimental Asthma in Mouse Pups." The National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences and the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease supported this research.
Source: University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston
(April 2010)
