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High BPA exposure may disrupt fertility in women
Preliminary observations from a study with human eggs (oocytes) indicate that exposure to bisphenol A may increase the likelihood of abnormal egg development in women.
“To our knowledge, this is the first study that has shown that bisphenol A has a direct effect on egg maturation in humans,” Catherine Racowsky, PhD, director of the Assisted Reproductive Technologies Laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said in a press release. “Because exposure to BPA is so ubiquitous, patients and medical professionals should be aware that BPA may cause a significant disruption to the fundamentals of the human reproductive process and may play a role in unexplained infertility.”
Racowsky and colleagues, including Russ Hauser, MD, MPH, ScD, of the Harvard School of Public Health, conducted two separate experiments using 352 clinically discarded oocytes from 121 patients who underwent in vitro fertilization (IVF)/intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) at the institution between March 2011 and April 2012. They randomly assigned 292 to meiotic stage experiments (71 patients provided 2 oocytes; 50 patients provided 3 oocytes) comparing the effect of exposure to a high concentration of BPA (20 mcg/mL) with controls. Furthermore, they investigated the effects of lower BPA concentrations (20 ng/mL and 200 ng/mL) on meiotic maturation (metaphase II) using the remaining 60 oocytes, according to data.
There was a decrease in the percentage of oocytes that progressed to metaphase II (P=.002), and an increase in degenerate eggs (P=.01) and in eggs that spontaneously activated (P=.007) when BPA exposure was increased, according to researchers. Data also indicated a decreased incidence of bipolar spindles (P<.0001) and aligned chromosomes (P=.002) as the BPA exposure was decreased among oocytes that reached metaphase II.
“Our data show that BPA exposure can dramatically inhibit egg maturation and adds to a growing body of evidence about the impact of BPA on human health. I would encourage further research to gain a greater understanding of the role BPA plays in infertility,” Racowsky said.
Disclosure: This work was funded in part by NIEHS Center Grant Pilot Project (P30-ES000002) and was co-directed by Racowsky and Hauser in the Harvard School of Public Health.