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Association between serum pyrethroid insecticide levels and incident type 2 diabetes risk: a nested case–control study in Dongfeng–Tongji cohort

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Abstract

Pyrethroid insecticides have been extensively used worldwide, but few studies explored the prospective association between pyrethroid exposure and incident type 2 diabetes (T2D). We conducted a nested case–control study of 2012 paired cases and controls, and measured eight pyrethroid insecticides in the baseline sera. We used conditional logistic regression models to estimate odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals, and constructed multiple-pollutant models to investigate the association of pyrethroid mixture with incident T2D risk. The median concentrations (detection rates) were 3.53 μg/L (92.45%), 0.52 μg/L (99.80%), 1.16 μg/L (90.61%) and 1.43 μg/L (99.95%) for permethrin, cypermethrin, fenvalerate, and deltamethrin, respectively. Compared to participants with serum fenvalerate levels in the first quartile, the multivariable-adjusted ORs of incident T2D were 1.20 (95% CI 0.86–1.67), 1.41 (0.97–2.05), and 2.29 (1.27–4.11) for the second, third and fourth quartile (P trend = 0.01). Spline analysis further confirmed the positive association between serum fenvalerate levels and incident T2D risk (P for overall association = 0.006). Furthermore, mixture models revealed a positive association of pyrethroid mixture with incident T2D risk, with serum fenvalerate ranked as the top contributor (proportion of relative contribution: > 70%). We found that high concentrations of serum pyrethroid insecticides were significantly associated with an increased risk of incident T2D. The elevated risk was largely explained by fenvalerate. Further investigations are urgently needed to confirm our findings and elucidate the underlying mechanisms, given the widespread use of pyrethroids and the global pandemic of diabetes.

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The full datasets used in this analysis are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank Y. Xu, L. Zhao, M. Wang, and Q. Tan from the School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology for their helpful suggestions in the experimental analysis and instrument operation. We are thankful to the laboratory staff who participated in our basic work. We especially appreciate all the participants involved in this study for the questionnaires and biological samples donated.

Funding

This study was supported by the grants from the National Natural Science Foundation (No. 82073656 and 81930092); the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, HUST (No. 2022JYCXJJ051); the Program for HUST Academic Frontier Youth Team (No. 2017QYTD18); and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2016YFC0900800 and 2017YFC0907500).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Occupational and Environmental Health, Ministry of Education and State Key Laboratory of Environmental Health (Incubating), School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

    Chengyong Jia, Shiyang Zhang, Xu Cheng, Jun An, Xin Zhang, Peiwen Li, Wending Li, Xiu Wang, Yu Yuan, Hongyan Zheng, Xiaomin Zhang, Huan Guo, Tangchun Wu, Tao Jing & Meian He

  2. State Key Laboratory for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases, School of Medicine, First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

    Xiu Wang

  3. Department of Cardiovascular Diseases, Sinopharm Dongfeng General Hospital, Hubei University of Medicine, Shiyan, Hubei, China

    Handong Yang

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  1. Chengyong Jia
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Contributions

CYJ, MAH contributed to conception and study design, completed data collection and laboratory analyses, performed analyses, interpreted results, and drafted and revised the manuscript critically. SYZ, XC, JA, XZ, and PWL participated in the data collection, laboratory analyses, and manuscript revision. WDL participated in the study design, method construction, result interpretation and manuscript revision. YY, HYZ, XMZ, HG, HDY, and TCW participated in the maintenance of the cohort, data analysis, and study design of the study. MAH and TJ were responsible for obtaining all necessary resources for the study and critically revised all manuscript drafts, including the final version. All authors gave final approval of the version to be published.

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Correspondence to Meian He.

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The project was approved by Ethics and Human Subject Committees of the School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (2012–10), and all participants provided written informed consent.

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Jia, C., Zhang, S., Cheng, X. et al. Association between serum pyrethroid insecticide levels and incident type 2 diabetes risk: a nested case–control study in Dongfeng–Tongji cohort. Eur J Epidemiol 37, 959–970 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-022-00906-0

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