This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
BPA increased risk for cancer in human prostate tissue
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Even low fetal exposure to bisphenol A has the potential to increase the risk for prostate cancer later in life, according to data published in Endocrinology.
“Our research provides the first direct evidence that exposure to BPA during development, at the levels we see in our day-to-day lives, increases the risk for prostate cancer in human prostate tissue,” Gail S. Prins, PhD, from the department of urology at the College of Medicine, University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Illinois Cancer Center, said in a press release. “The findings of adverse effects of BPA in human tissue are highly relevant and should encourage agencies like the FDA to re-evaluate their policies in the near future.”
BPA tends to mimic estrogen and has been linked to cancer in rodent models, according to researchers.
Prins and colleagues used human prostate epithelial stem-like cells cultured from prostates of young, disease-free donors to determine whether the human prostate is sensitive to BPA, according to data.
They implanted human prostate stem cells taken from deceased young adult men into mice. Two weeks after implantation, the researchers administered BPA (100 mcg BPA/kg or 250 mcg BPA/kg) to the mice.
“The amount of BPA we fed the mice was equivalent to levels ingested by the average person,” Prins said. “We didn’t feed them exorbitantly high doses.”
Subsequently, mice were administered estrogen as it naturally occurs in aging men. After 2 to 4 months, Prins and colleagues reported that one-third of tissue samples collected from mice fed the BPA demonstrated pre-cancerous lesions or prostate cancer (33% to 36%), compared with only 13% in a control group of mice fed oil (P<.05).
In addition, continuous exposure to BPA increased the incidence of prostate intraepithelial neoplasia to 45% (P<.01), researchers wrote.
“We believe that BPA actually reprograms the stem cells to be more sensitive to estrogen throughout life, leading to a life-long increased susceptibility to diseases including cancer,” Prins said.
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
Collapse
Prins GS. Endocrinology. 2014; [published online ahead of print].
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts