Work

THE DIABETES EPIDEMIC: Environmental Chemical Exposure in Etiology and Treatment.

Year: 2012

Type: article

Abstract: The last several decades have witnessed a dramatic deterioration in human metabolic health, with the rapidly increasing prevalence of type 1 (T1DM) and type 2 (T2DM) diabetes mellitus.1,2 In 2011, 366 million people worldwide had diabetes, and this number is projected to reach a staggering 552 million by 2030.3 The tremendous burden of diabetes contributes significantly to health care spending, amounting to $174 billion in the U.S. alone.4 To address the individual and societal burdens of diabetes, efforts to uncover its causes and develop interventions to limit its development are critical. The rise in worldwide diabetes prevalence has paralleled the dramatic increase in global obesity rates. The reasons underlying increases in body mass are incompletely understood and are not fully explained by diet and physical inactivity.5 Nor is diabetes completely accounted for by obesity; among U.S. adults, nearly 20 percent of those with diabetes are neither overweight nor obese.6 It is time to develop a more holistic view of the causes of diabetes. Interestingly, rates of both T1DM and T2DM correlate with the dramatic increase in synthetic chemical production since World War II.7 Indeed, several epidemiology studies have shown that adults exposed to a mixture of lipophilic and persistent chemicals have a higher T2DM rate than controls.8,9 Furthermore, animal studies suggest that chemical exposure can promote the development of a diabetic phenotype (reviewed in Neel and Sargis 2011, Sargis et al 2012, and Batista et al 2012). Collectively, these findings suggest that exposure to a specific class of environmental chemicals, endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which interfere with hormone action,12 may contribute to the diabetes epidemic and should be considered targets for intervention to limit development of the disease (see Table: Chemical Exposures Associated with Diabetes in Human Studies for a list of chemicals associated with diabetes in epidemiological studies). Table Chemical Exposures Associated with Diabetes in Human Studies

Source: PubMed

Authors: Robert M Sargis, Sarah G Howard, Retha R Newbold, Jerrold J Heindel

Institutions: University of Chicago, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

Language: English

Topic: Effects and risks of endocrine disrupting chemicals

Subfield: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

Field: Environmental Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: green

Funder: National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

Award: Environmental Endocrine Disruption of Adipocyte Metabolism