Yale researchers may have solved a fundamental medical mystery: how bisphenol A (BPA), a ubiquitous plastics component, changes genetic chemistry and impairs fertility.
The Yale team’s findings, previewed earlier this month to the Endocrine Society, a 14,000-member scientific and medical professional organization devoted to hormone system research and treatment, have intensified scientists’ concern that exposure BPA, a synthetic estrogen that disrupts the endocrine system, may have grave consequences for human reproduction.
In an interview, study co-author Hugh S. Taylor, M.D., professor and chief of the reproductive endocrinology section at Yale University School of Medicine, said his team injected pregnant mice with BPA for just one week. After those mice, and a control group, gave birth, the scientists found that the genetic chemistry of female offspring exposed to BPA in the womb had been irrevocably altered.
A particular gene known as HOXA10, responsible for normal uterine development and fertility in both mice and humans, had been stripped of numerous so-called “methyl groups,” each composed of a single hydrogen atom and three carbon atoms.
Tags : infertility, plastic, research
Categories : Medical Research
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