Identification of phthalate esters in the serum of young Puerto Rican girls with premature breast development.
By I. Colón, Doris Caro, C. Bourdony, O. Rosario. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2000
642 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Premature breast development (thelarche) is the growth of mammary tissue in girls younger than 8 years of age without other manifestations of puberty. Puerto Rico has the highest known incidence of premature thelarche ever reported. In the last two decades since this serious public health anomaly has been observed, no explanation for this phenomenon has been found. Some organic pollutants, including pesticides and some plasticizers, can disrupt normal sexual development in wildlife, and many of these have been widely used in Puerto Rico. This investigation was designed to identify pollutants in the serum of Puerto Rican girls with premature thelarche. A method for blood serum analysis was optimized and validated using pesticides and phthalate esters as model compounds of endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Recovery was > 80% for all compounds. We performed final detection by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. We analyzed 41 serum samples from thelarche patients and 35 control samples. No pesticides or their metabolite residues were detected in the serum of the study or control subjects. Significantly high levels of phthalates [dimethyl, diethyl, dibutyl, and di-(2-ethylhexyl)] and its major metabolite mono-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate were identified in 28 (68%) samples from thelarche patients. Of the control samples analyzed, only one showed significant levels of di-isooctyl phthalate. The phthalates that we identified have been classified as endocrine disruptors. This study suggests a possible association between plasticizers with known estrogenic and antiandrogenic activity and the cause of premature breast development in a human female population.
Subfields: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Oncology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/eadc00b4f830a59e9472853423293539e7adf143
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In Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis
Citations in the corpus
- Mechanisms of phthalate ester toxicity in the female reproductive system. (2002, background): “Puerto Rican girls with premature breast development (thelarche) had higher levels of blood phthalates compared to other girls, suggesting an association between phthalate exposure and abnormal reproductive development (Colón et al. 2000).”
- Concentrations of parabens in human breast tumours (2004, background): “Analogous problems have been encountered with the measurement of phthalate esters because of their common use as plasticizers and their ubiquitous dispersal as impurities in solvents, water, glassware and many items of clinical and analytical laboratory equipment (Lopez-Aviva et al., 1990; Leung & G”
- Human body burdens of chemicals used in plastic manufacture (2009, result): “1993) or produced ambiguous results (Colon et al. 2000; McKee 2004).”
- A Review of Biomonitoring of Phthalate Exposures (2019, background): “Some studies have linked phthalate exposure to premature thelarche [28,29], endometriosis [30,31], low semen quality [32], reduced testosterone levels [33], obesity, diabetes, and breast cancer [34,35].”
- Endocrine-disrupting chemicals: an Endocrine Society scientific statement. (2009, background): “In the female (Table 3), premature thelarche has been reported in girls exposed to phthalates (26), although these data need to be replicated.”
- Environmental phthalate exposure in relation to reproductive outcomes and other health endpoints in humans (2008, background): “Early childhood Females Premature thelarche DEHP (in serum) Colon et al. (2000)”