Influence of environmental exposure to endocrine disruptors on cardiometabolic health
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Obesity is a complex endocrine disease closely associated with other cardiometabolic risk factors such as hyperglycemia, dyslipidemia, and hypertension. Together, they increase the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer and premature death. Given the increasing global burden of obesity and metabolic disease, there is an urgent need to understand and intervene on all modifiable factors. Growing evidence suggests that endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) can disrupt energy and lipid metabolism, influencing obesity as well as cardiometabolic health. Furthermore, rapid infant growth is a well-established risk factor for obesity and could be an early target of EDCs since growth is partly regulated by hormones. This thesis aims to evaluate relationships between exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals and cardiometabolic risk factors in both adults and children, focusing on exposures which are ubiquitous in different populations.For the first objective, I used data from a cross-sectional and nationally representative biomonitoring survey in Canada (the Canadian Health Measures Survey) to investigate whether urinary concentrations of parabens, common preservative agents in cosmetic, personal care, food, and pharmaceutical products, are associated with obesity and cardiometabolic health in adults (n=1137) and children (n=1418). Despite the relatively short half-life of these chemicals, almost all Canadians (92%) had detectable levels of methyl paraben in their urine. The associations with metabolic syndrome appeared to differ by sex: among men, propyl paraben was associated with 40% (95% CI: 3, 90) higher prevalence per 10-fold increase in concentration, while ethyl paraben was associated with 63% (95% CI: 2, 86) lower prevalence among women. Additionally, inverse associations were observed with obesity and high-density lipoprotein among women. No associations were observed among children. For the second objective, I used data from a birth cohort in South Africa, the Venda Health Examination of Mothers, Babies and their Environment (VHEMBE) to examine whether maternal peri-partum serum or urine concentrations of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and pyrethroid insecticides used for malaria vector control are associated with adiposity and cardiometabolic health in the children at age 5 years (n=637). Using marginal structural models weighted by the inverse probability of treatment and censoring, I observed that prenatal exposure to pyrethroid insecticides, but not DDT, was associated with lower BMI z-score, waist circumference, and body fat percentage. These findings did not differ by sex.Finally, for the third objective I examined associations between prenatal exposure to these same insecticides and child growth trajectories from birth through to the age of 5, again using data from VHEMBE (n=751). I applied a flexible mixed-effects growth trajectory model which identified each child’s relative size and their age at peak weight velocity and included these parameters as outcomes in marginal structural models weighted by the inverse probability of treatment. This analysis showed that the pyrethroid metabolite trans-DCCA was associated with smaller size (-20.9 grams [95% CI: -41.6, -3.2] per 10-fold increase) among boys but not among girls. Associations with cis-DBCA and cis-DCCA were similar in magnitude but the confidence intervals included the null. Overall, the findings presented here provide evidence that parabens and pyrethroids may impact cardiometabolic health in adults and children, with different effects in males versus females. Though preservatives and pesticides have their benefits, given the ubiquity of these exposures, their effects on human health should be better understood in order to make informed public health decisions
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".