Summary: A new study has found that actually lower amounts of chemicals, when combined, can have accumulated harmful effects on human cells. Scientists identified and analyzed the presence of over 300 chemicals using blood tests from a group of expectant people.
Testing these molecular compositions revealed that they could affect nerve-like cells, which supports the idea that the combined effects of chemicals add up to difficult physical combinations. This study suggests that combined risks, rather than isolated chemicals, should be reconsidered for chemical risk assessment.
Important Facts:
- A study found that low-level substance combinations can have a number of harmful effects.
- In female women’s body samples, more than 300 compounds were analyzed.
- Results call for updated substance risk assessments to take into account blend results.
Origin: Helmholtz
” We are exposed to a wide range of pesticides that are distributed and accumulate in our bodies in our daily lives. According to Prof. Beate Escher, Professor of Cell Toxicology at the University of Tübingen and Head of the UFZ Department of Cell Toxicology,” These are very complex combinations that can change bodily functions and our health.”
” The effects of pesticides add up when they occur in low concentrations in complicated combinations, as is well known from economic and water research. This is where our research comes in. Whether this is also the situation with the human body has not yet been thoroughly investigated.
The intensive study was based on more than 600 plasma samples from pregnant women from the UFZ’s LiNA, a study that has been ongoing since 2006. The researchers began by examining the various chemical compositions in these tests.
” We sought to know what pesticides were present in the blood plasma and what quantities.” Georg Braun, postdoctoral scholar in Beate Escher’s working class and second author of the study, says that we used a two-step removal process to remove as many different chemical mixtures as possible.
We identified 1, 000 various substances that we knew may be present in the environment, become ingested by people, and be responsible for ill-effects for human health by performing mass spectrometer analyses. Of these, we were able to calculate around 300 compounds in some blood tests”.
The researchers were able to learn about the chemical compositions ‘ composition and concentration numbers in the 600 individual blood examples.
The researchers calculated the harmful effects of the substance mixtures using a projection unit. They used a well-established mobile bioassay based on human cells to examine the experimental predictions of the combination effects.
” We analysed personal toxins as well as around 80 unique, self-produced chemical mixtures in reasonable focus ratios. The components of the blood tests were likewise tested”, says Georg Braun.
The effects were evident.
Environmental toxicologist Beate Escher claims that the laboratory tests confirmed the models ‘ predictions about how the toxins add up to complex combinations.
” Even if the individual amounts of toxic chemicals are so small that they are each below the effect level, there is still an influence on nerve-like cells in difficult mixtures with many other chemicals.”
But what do these findings actually mean?
With our research, we were able to demonstrate for the first time that what is known about the effects of chemical combinations on the environment even applies to people,” says Escher.
” It is therefore important that we rethink threat assessment. Indicator materials alone are far from enough. In potential, we must learn to think in terms of combinations”.
Dr. Gunda Herberth, the head of the LiNA research at UFZ, continues,” It is becoming increasingly obvious that many ailments like allergies, immune system problems, obesity, and the development of the nervous system are linked to exposure to toxins in the womb or in first childhood.
The test method used in this study, which uses chemical analysis and cell-based biotest methods to extract chemical mixtures from human examples and characterize them, opens up new avenues for studying the effects of complex chemical mixtures on human health.
The scientists want to improve their test process and look at the effects of chemical mixtures on another health-relevant endpoints like immunotoxicity in upcoming study projects.
Additionally, they want to find out if there are any possible connections between pesticide contact and child development issues.
Future studies projects involving many experts in the fields of medicine and disease will be conducted by the European Centre for Child and Adolescent Health as part of a German-wide system of college hospitals, universities, and non-university research institutions.
About this information about economic neuroscience research
Author: Susanne Hufe
Source: Helmholtz
Contact: Susanne Hufe – Helmholtz
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Start entry.
Beate Escher and colleagues ‘” Neurotoxic mix effects of substances extracted from female women’s blood.” Research
Abstract
results of chemicals taken from female women’s body are toxic mixtures
Only a small, unknowable portion of the chemical universe is generally covered by animal biomonitoring research.
To get complex combinations of natural compounds in heart, we combined biochemical examination with a high-throughput in vitro test for neurotoxicity.
624 pregnant women in the European LiNA group were taken from blood using a non-selective extraction technique for natural chemicals. 294 of >, 1000 specific substances were detected and quantified. Numerous of the chemicals and full extracts that were discovered had a significant impact on the development of neurites.
The neurotoxicity assay’s simulation of complex mixtures of detected chemicals revealed antioxidant blend effects at concentrations below the effect thresholds for each chemical.
The use of high-throughput bioassays and high-throughput target screening has the potential to enhance human biomonitoring and provide a novel method for including mixture effects in clinical studies.
