Differential Effects of Glyphosate and Roundup on Human Placental Cells and Aromatase
By S. Richard, S. Moslemi, H. Sipahutar, Nora Benachour, G. Séralini. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2005
597 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Roundup is a glyphosate-based herbicide used worldwide, including on most genetically modified plants that have been designed to tolerate it. Its residues may thus enter the food chain, and glyphosate is found as a contaminant in rivers. Some agricultural workers using glyphosate have pregnancy problems, but its mechanism of action in mammals is questioned. Here we show that glyphosate is toxic to human placental JEG3 cells within 18 hr with concentrations lower than those found with agricultural use, and this effect increases with concentration and time or in the presence of Roundup adjuvants. Surprisingly, Roundup is always more toxic than its active ingredient. We tested the effects of glyphosate and Roundup at lower nontoxic concentrations on aromatase, the enzyme responsible for estrogen synthesis. The glyphosate-based herbicide disrupts aromatase activity and mRNA levels and interacts with the active site of the purified enzyme, but the effects of glyphosate are facilitated by the Roundup formulation in microsomes or in cell culture. We conclude that endocrine and toxic effects of Roundup, not just glyphosate, can be observed in mammals. We suggest that the presence of Roundup adjuvants enhances glyphosate bioavailability and/or bioaccumulation.
Subfields: Plant Science, Pollution
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/15eea38876ac5a7515978b07addee82d0314097c
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Citations in the corpus
- Effect of Endocrine Disruptor Pesticides: A Review (2011, background): “O O Disruption of aromatase activity, preventing the production of estrogens [126] U: 1.”
- Genetically modified crops safety assessments: present limits and possible improvements (2011, background): “Roundup adjuvants even stabilize glyphosate and allow its penetration into cells, which in turn inhibit estrogen synthesis as a side effect, cytochrome P450 aromatase inhibition [21].”
- Re-registration Challenges of Glyphosate in the European Union (2018, background): “Glyphosate was found to inhibit aromatases in JEG3 cells with EC50 values of 7 mg/ml (Richard et al., 2005), but causing ∼10% inhibition only at 0.”
- Detection of Glyphosate Residues in Animals and Humans (2014, background): “[9] reported that such as glyphosate inhibits Cyp450 aromatase inhibition, indicated crucial for sex steroid hormone synthesis.”
- Teratogenic Effects of Glyphosate-Based Herbicides: Divergence of Regulatory Decisions from Scientific Evidence (2012, background): “Studies have found that, although glyphosate itself is toxic, the formulations are more toxic than glyphosate alone [32,33,73,74].”