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Association between acrylamide exposure and sex hormones among premenopausal and postmenopausal women: NHANES, 2013–2016

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Abstract

Purpose

Acrylamide (AA) is a potential carcinogen that mainly comes from fried, baked and roasted foods, and Hb adducts of AA (HbAA) and its metabolite glycidamide (HbGA) are the biomarkers of its exposure. Increasing evidence suggests that AA is associated with various hormone-related cancers. This study aims to explore the association of HbAA and HbGA with female serum sex hormone concentrations.

Methods

942 women from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey cycles (2013–2016) were included in this cross-sectional study. The associations between HbAA or HbGA or HbGA/HbAA and sex hormones were assessed by the multiple linear regression. Further stratified analyses were conducted to figure out the effects of menopausal status, BMI and smoking status on sex hormone levels.

Results

Among all participants, 597 were premenopausal and 345 were postmenopausal. HbAA was positively associated with both two androgen indicators. Specifically, a ln-unit increase in HbAA was associated with 0.41 ng/dL higher ln(total testosterone, TT) (95% CI 0.00, 0.27) and 0.14 ng/dL higher ln(free testosterone) (95%CI 0.00, 0.28), respectively. However, HbGA concentrations had no association with sex hormones in the overall population. Additionally, HbGA/HbAA was negatively associated with TT and SHBG in the overall population as well as postmenopausal women. In stratified analysis, higher HbAA was associated with rising TT in postmenopausal women (β = 0.29, 95%CI 0.04, 0.53) and underweight/normal-weight women (β = 0.18, 95%CI 0.03, 0.33). Other indicators had no significant association detected in estradiol and sex hormone-binding globulin.

Conclusion

Our results revealed that HbAA was positively associated with androgen concentrations, especially in postmenopausal and BMI < 25 women.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the NHANES repository, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31771662).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Translational Medicine, Key Laboratory of Birth Defects and Related Diseases of Women and Children (Sichuan University), Ministry of Education, West China Second University Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610041, Sichuan Province, China

    R. Wang & F. Ma

  2. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, West China Second University Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610041, Sichuan Province, China

    R. Wang, X. Deng & F. Ma

  3. Key Laboratory of Birth Defects and Related Diseases of Women and Children (Sichuan University), Ministry of Education, Chengdu, 610041, Sichuan Province, China

    X. Deng

  4. Department of Obstetrics/Gynecology, Key Laboratory of Obstetric, Gynecologic and Pediatric Diseases and Birth Defects of Ministry of Education, West China Second University Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610041, Sichuan Province, China

    Q. Ma

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Contributions

Conceptualization, RW, QM, and FM; methodology, formal analysis and software, RW; validation, RW and XD; investigation, RW and XD; resources and data curation, RW; writing–original draft preparation, RW and XD; writing–review and editing, RW, QM, and FM; visualization, RW and FM; supervision and project administration, QM and FM; funding acquisition, FM.

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Correspondence to F. Ma.

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The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Ethics approval was accepted by the institutional review board of the NCHS and study design was confirmed in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Wang, R., Deng, X., Ma, Q. et al. Association between acrylamide exposure and sex hormones among premenopausal and postmenopausal women: NHANES, 2013–2016. J Endocrinol Invest 46, 1533–1547 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40618-022-01976-3

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