Environmental Endocrine Disruption of Energy Metabolism and Cardiovascular Risk

Abstract

Rates of metabolic and cardiovascular diseases have increased at an astounding rate in recent decades. While poor diet and physical inactivity are central drivers, these lifestyle changes alone fail to fully account for the magnitude and rapidity of the epidemic. Thus, attention has turned to identifying novel risk factors, including the contribution of environmental endocrine disrupting chemicals. Epidemiological and preclinical data support a role for various contaminants in the pathogenesis of diabetes. In addition to the vascular risk associated with dysglycemia, emerging evidence implicates multiple pollutants in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease. Reviewed herein are studies linking endocrine disruptors to these key diseases that drive significant individual and societal morbidity and mortality. Identifying chemicals associated with metabolic and cardiovascular disease as well as their mechanisms of action is critical for developing novel treatment strategies and public policy to mitigate the impact of these diseases on human health.

Environmental chemicals mediated the effect of old housing on adult health problems: US NHANES, 2009–2010

“…We also modelled to see whether the associations between housing built year and individual health status would persist after additionally adjusting for environmental chemicals. This is because environmental chemicals have been observed to play a role in human health pathway (Kirkley and Sargis 2014;Shiue and Hristova 2014;Yorita et al 2013), and we hypothesised that environmental chemicals could be confounding the associations between housing age and human health. As expected, those observed significant associations mentioned above all disappeared (data not shown).…”

Risk Factors for Non-communicable Diseases in Vietnam: A Focus on Pesticides

“…Lifestyle factors such as decreased physical activity and energy rich diet, together with a genetic predisposition, are known as main factors in the onset of metabolic dysregulation and metabolic syndrome and related obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular risks (Kirkley and Sargis, 2014). On the other side, the limited success in reversing such morbidities by focusing solely on nutrition, physical exercise or drug therapies fosters the hypothesis of a significant contribution from environmental chemical factors (Heindel et al, 2015).…”

“…Indeed, multiple chemicals with different half-lives, metabolism, persistence, tissue accumulation and target sensitivities affect many aspects of metabolism (Kirkley and Sargis, 2014). Metabolic disruption is crucial to the effectiveness of prevention plans (cumulative exposure).…”

Estrogenic Compounds Have Divergent Effects on Human Endothelial Progenitor Cell Migration according to Sex of the Donor

“…BPA is widely used over the world in the plastics industry and in the manufacturing of packaging [13], and can be detected in >90% of humans [13]. BPA exposure is associated with obesity, diabetes, disorders of the reproductive and immune systems, oxidative stress and endothelial dysfunction [14,15,16,17,18,19,20]. Recently, Pellegrini et al [21] showed that BPAis able to affect migration in rat vascular smooth muscle cells, especially in female cells.…”