Widespread detection of Polyethylene glycol reveals chronic human exposure through pharmaceutical drugs
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Polyethylene glycol (PEG) is a synthetic polymer ubiquitous in pharmaceuticals, personal care products, food additives, and industrial manufacturing. Despite its widespread use and potential importance as an exposure chemical, the prevalence of PEG exposure and its excretion in human populations remain largely uncharacterized. Moreover, PEG detected in human biofluids is frequently assumed to arise from analytical contamination during sample preparation, potentially obscuring its contribution to the human exposome and confounding metabolic phenotyping studies. Here, we show that PEG as a component of the human xenobiotic exposome and is further metabolized into PEG hydoxy acid and diacid metabolites in humans. We further find that PEG exposure is associated with alterations in microbiome composition and short-chain fatty acid metabolism, suggesting its biological impact of exposure. We identify PEG exposure in approximately 2.3% of publicly available metabolomics data files and provide a reusable 85,484 candidate PEG and PEGylated MS/MS spectral library for future use for the metabolomic community. Together, these findings establish PEG in human biofluids can reflect genuine exposure, and that PEG exposure is neither metabolically inert nor biologically silent.
Authors: Harsha Gouda, Patricia Kelly, Luke Whiley, Daniel Gómez-Pérez, Anna Mascellani Bergo, Wilhan Donizete Gonçalves Nunes, Elena Chekmeneva, Ada H.Y. Yuen, Mark David, Shona McKirdy, Andrew Nelson, Darren L. Smith, Haoqi Nina Zhao, Jeong In Seo, Edward J. Mathias, Gillian Farrell, Toon Scheurink, Michael Strobel, Helena Mannochio-Russo, Konstantinos Gkikas, Mingxun Wang, Jaroslav Havlik, Christopher Quince, Zoltan Takats, Matthew Lewis, Konstantinos Gerasimidis, Nicholas J. W. Rattray, Pieter C. Dorrestein
Institutions: University of California San Diego, Glasgow Royal Infirmary, University of Glasgow, Curtin University, Norwich Research Park, Earlham Institute, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Imperial College London, Northumbria University, Stanford University, University of Strathclyde, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, University of California, Riverside, Quadram Institute, NHS Lanarkshire
Language: English
Subfield: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funders: American Heart Association, Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, Crohn's and Colitis Foundation, UK Research and Innovation, National Institute for Health and Care Research, Imperial College London, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, National Research Foundation, National Research Foundation of Korea, Medical Research Council, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, NIHR Imperial Biomedical Research Centre, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Awards: G1399919057, G2291640899, G2370171901, G2887588249, Establishing MRC-NIHR Phenome Centre, a world leading high-throughput metabolic phenotyping centre for humanpopulation disease-risk biomarker discovery., The Airwave Health Monitoring Study of the British Police Forces (Airwave Study), Decoding Biodiversity (DECODE): Linking Fine-Scale Microbial Diversity To Ecosystem Functions, G6173764861, G652265007, G7445023556, Metabolomics for the discovery of diet derived microbial metabolites in chronic diseases, G8222511888
OpenAlex ID: W7213541521