Gestational Exposure to Persistent Organic Pollutants: Maternal Liver Residues, Pregnancy Outcome, and Effects on Hepatic Gene Expression Profiles in the Dam and Fetus

Dietary exposure of Inuit people to a mixture of pesticides and polychlorinated biphenyls, or persistent organic pollutants (POPs), during pregnancy is a public health concern. We examined the consequences of administering the mixture of 28 POPs found in the Inuit diet (at doses representing 10–1000...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bernard Robaire, Barbara F. Hales
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
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Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.328.3598
http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/content/72/2/242.full.pdf
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Summary:Dietary exposure of Inuit people to a mixture of pesticides and polychlorinated biphenyls, or persistent organic pollutants (POPs), during pregnancy is a public health concern. We examined the consequences of administering the mixture of 28 POPs found in the Inuit diet (at doses representing 10–1000 times dietary levels) by gavage to pregnant Sprague-Dawley rats either during gestation days 0–19 or 8–19. The levels of individual components of the POPs mixture in the maternal liver were measured by high-resolution mass spectrometry. On gestation day 20, dams were sacrificed and pregnancy outcome determined. RNA isolated from maternal and fetal livers was 32 P-labeled for gene expression profiling. The concentrations of individual POPs were increased in maternal livers of dams gavaged with the 1000 � POPs mixture by 10- to 500-fold. While exposure to POPs had no significant effects on pregnancy outcome, dramatic changes were observed in the