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Gender-specific associations between mixture of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and telomere length

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Abstract

Evidence shows the relationships of individual environmental PAHs by their urinary metabolites with relative telomere length (RTL), which may be affected by biological gender differences. Since plasma parent PAHs are not metabolized, it may reflect human exposure to PAHs more realistically in daily life. Thus, exploring joint associations between plasma parent PAHs and RTL is urgent, which may identify the major contributor to its adverse effect. In this study, 2577 participants were obtained from the Henan Rural Cohort. The level of PAHs in blood samples was detected by gas chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry. RTL in blood samples was detected by quantitative polymerase chain reaction. Generalized linear models or quantile g-computation were performed to evaluate the associations between the individual or a mixture of PAHs and RTL. Results from generalized linear models showed that each unit increment in BghiP value corresponded to a 0.098 (95%CI: 0.067, 0.129) increment in RTL for men; each unit increment in BaP, BghiP and Flu value corresponded to a 0.041 (95%CI: 0.014, 0.068), 0.081 (95%CI: 0.055, 0.107) and 0.016 (95%CI: 0.005, 0.027) increment in RTL for women. Results from quantile-g computation revealed that each one-quantile increment in the mixture of 10 PAHs corresponded to a 0.057 (95%CI: 0.021, 0.094) and 0.047 (95%CI: 0.003, 0.091) increment in RTL values of women and men, but these associations were mainly ascribed to three PAHs for women (BaP, Flu and BghiP) and men (BaP, BghiP and Pyr), respectively. Similar results were found in smoking men and cooking women without smoking. Our study found that exposure to 10 PAHs mixture was positively associated with RTL across gender, mainly attributed to Flu, BaP and BghiP, implicating that gender-specific associations may be ascribed to tobacco and cooking smoke pollution. The findings provided clues for effective measures to control PAHs pollutants-related aging disease.

Clinical trial registration The Henan Rural Cohort Study has been registered at the Chinese Clinical Trial Register (Registration number: ChiCTR-OOC-15006699). Date of registration: 06 July 2015. http://www.chictr.org.cn/showproj.aspx?proj=11375.

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Abbreviations

Ant:

Anthracene

BaP:

Benzo(a)pyrene

BbF:

Benzo(b)fluoranthene

BghiP:

Benzo(g,h,i)perylene

BkF:

Benzo(k)fluoranthene

Chr:

Chrysene

DahA:

Dibenz(a,h)anthracene

Flu:

Fluoranthene

Phe:

Phenanthrene

Pyr:

Pyrene

In123cdP:

Indeno[1,2,3-cd]pyrene

PAHs:

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons

POPs:

Persistent organic pollutant

Ct:

Cyclic threshold

CI:

Confidence interval

RTL:

Relative telomere length

LMW:

Low molecular weight

HMW:

High molecular weight

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Acknowledgements

We thank all volunteers who participated in the study, the doctors at local hospitals for blood drawing services, and my teammates for their hard work.

Funding

This research was supported by Science and Technology Innovation Team Support Plan of Colleges and Universities in Henan Province (Grant NO: 21IRTSTHN029), the Science and Technique Foundation of Henan Province (Grant NO: 222102320029), the Foundation of National Key Program of Research and Development of China (Grant NO: 2016YFC0900803), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant NO: 2019M662548, 2021M702934), the open project of Key Laboratory of Environment and health, ministry of Education (Grant NO: 2020GWKFJJ01), the Wuhan Preventive Medicine Research Project (Grant NO: WY22A01), the Health Commission of Hubei Province Scientific Research Project (Grant NO: WJ2019H303). The funders had no role in the study design, data collection, and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Author notes

  1. Xiaoyu Hou and Ruiying Li are contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, College of Public Health, Zhengzhou University, 100 Kexue Avenue, Zhengzhou, 450001, Henan, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaoyu Hou, Ruiying Li, Juan Wang, Dandan Wei, Xiaohuan Yang, Wei Liao, Yinghao Yuchi, Xiaotian Liu, Wenqian Huo, Zhenxing Mao, Chongjian Wang & Jian Hou

  2. Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Wuhan, Hubei, People’s Republic of China

    Junlin Liu

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  1. Xiaoyu Hou
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Contributions

XH contributed to Investigation, Data curation, Methodology, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing-Original Draft. RL contributed to Investigation, Data curation, Writing-Review & Editing. JW contributed to Investigation, Writing-Review & Editing. DW contributed to Investigation, Writing-Review & Editing. XY contributed to Investigation, Writing-Review & Editing. WL contributed to Investigation, Writing-Review & Editing. YY contributed to Investigation, Writing-Review & Editing. XL contributed to Investigation, Writing-Review & Editing. WH contributed to Investigation, Writing-Review & Editing. ZM contributed to Investigation, Writing-Review & Editing. JL contributed to Investigation, Writing-Review & Editing. CW contributed to Investigation, Validation, Supervision, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Writing-Review & Editing. JH contributed to Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Validation, Supervision, Writing-Reviewing and Editing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jian Hou.

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Conflict of interest

All authors declare no conflict of interest.

Ethics approval

Ethics approval was obtained from the “Zhengzhou University Life Science Ethics Committee” (Ethics approval code: [2015] MEC (S128)) and written informed consent was obtained from all participants before this study.

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Hou, X., Li, R., Wang, J. et al. Gender-specific associations between mixture of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and telomere length. Environ Geochem Health 45, 9583–9598 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-023-01752-z

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