Endocrine disruptors
Introduction
In 1985, Hull et al.(Hull, Glazener et al. 1985) published the results of a study in which they assessed sub fertility in 708 couples in a health district in England and concluded that at least one in six couples need specialist help at some point in their lives because of subfertility. These findings were confirmed in two prospective studies in the Netherlands, estimating the cumulative incidence of sub fertility to be 10.4%(Beurskens, Maas et al. 1995) and 9.9% (Snick, Snick et al. 1997) for women aged between 15 and 45 years. It is generally assumed that the low fertility rates in the industrialized countries are the result of social and economic changes, such as women’s careers, postponed child wish, declining ideal family size, instability of partnership, etc. However, there is growing evidence to suspect that changing lifestyle and increasing environmental exposure to endocrine disruptors, are behind the trends in occurrence of reproductive health problems (Skakkebaek, Jorgensen et al. 2006). Modern life includes many uses and misuses of a number of consumer items, which may be contaminated with a mixture of chemical and natural products with adverse effects. The use of biomarkers can help to identify possible links between subfertility and exposure to endocrine disruptors at the individual level.
Endocrine disruptors
In two case-control studies - one in males and one in females - subfertility will be related to exposure to environmental contaminants from historical sources in the environment and to exposure to ‘newer’ contaminants in our daily life. The historical contaminants such as PCBs, dioxins, pesticides and heavy metals have accumulated in the environment since the seventies and are still relevant problems in Flanders. The ‘newer’ contaminants such as phthalates, bisphenol A and perfluor compounds are getting increasing attention in scientific research as they are present in a growing number of personal care products and daily consumption products such as clothing, packaging, toys, carpeting, electronic equipment, etc. These chemicals are all known to have hormone disrupting properties, although the relevance of these findings (mostly from in vitro and animal studies) at current environmental exposure levels is still largely unknown. Dioxins are well known anti–estrogens, PCBs have both estrogenic and anti- estrogenic effects depending on the congener (Connor, 1979), phtalates may act as anti-androgens (Latini et al, 2004), bisphenol A has been shown to exhibit estrogenic activity (Maffini et al, 2006) , reproductive and developmental effects from perfluorinated alkyl compounds have been observed in experimental animals as well as changed hormone levels ( Lau et al,2003; Austin et al, 2003), cadmium ( Schoeters et al, 2006) and lead (Pant et al, 2003) have been shown in a number of studies to affect sperm quality. All these chemicals may adversely affect fertility.
Staff
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Coordinator | Elly Den Hond, Departement of Environmental Toxicology, Flemish Institute for Technological Research |
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Promotor | Thomas D’Hooghe, Departement of Woman and Child - Gynaecologie, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven |
| Scientific researcher | Tim Nawrot Occupational, Environmental and Insurance Medicine, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven |
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Promotor | Jean Marc Kaufman, Department of Internal Medicine, University Ghent |
| Scientific researcher | Ahmed Mahmoud, Department of Internal Medicine, University Ghent |
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Promotor | Herman Tournaye Centre for Reproductive Medicine, Brussels Free University |
| Scientific researcher | Greta Verheyen Centre for Reproductive Medicine, Brussels Free University |