Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND PUBLIC HEALTH
Volume 16, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph16020271
Keywords
breast cancer; persistent organic pollutants; endocrine disruptor chemicals; physiologically based pharmacokinetic modeling; case-control study
Funding
- French National Institute of Cancer (INCa)
- Fondation de France
- French Agency for Environmental and Occupational Health Safety (ANSES-ex-AFSSET)
- French National Research Agency (ANR)
- Region Ile-de-France (DIM-SEnT)
- la Ligue contre le Cancer-Grand Ouest
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Exposure to environmental chemicals with hormonal effects, such as organochlorine compounds (OCs), during developmental periods of breast cells may have an impact on the incidence of breast cancer later in life. However, the assessment of exposure to these chemicals that occurred in early life at the time of breast cancer development in adult women is a difficult challenge in epidemiological studies. Plasma levels of the OCs p,p'-dichlorodiphenyl dichloroethene (DDE) and polychlorinated biphenyl congener 153 (PCB153) were measured in 695 cases and 1055 controls of a population-based case-control study conducted in France (CECILE study). Based on these values, we used a physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model to estimate PCB153 levels at age 11-20 years when the women were adolescents. Overall, there was no clear association between breast cancer risk and measured levels of DDE and PCB153 at the time of diagnosis, but there was a trend of decreasing odds ratios of breast cancer with increasing DDE and PCB153 levels in women aged 50 years and over. The PBPK model revealed that PCB153 concentrations estimated during adolescence were highest in the youngest women born after 1960 who reached adolescence at a time when environmental contamination was maximum, and very low in the oldest women who attained adolescence before the contamination peak. Negative associations between breast cancer and PCB153 estimates during adolescence were also found. The negative associations between DDE and PCB153 levels measured at the time of diagnosis or estimated during adolescence in our study were unexplained. Further investigations are needed to clarify whether this finding is real or related to study artifacts. However, this study suggests that using PBPK models in epidemiological studies to back-estimate OC exposures during early life stages may be useful to address critical questions on cancer development.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available