Serum cadmium levels in a sample of blood donors in the Western Amazon, Brazil, 2010-2011

Abstract

A cross-sectional study was conducted to determine the distribution of serum cadmium (Cd) levels in blood donors in Rio Branco, Acre State, Brazil. Blood samples were obtained from 922 volunteer blood donors from 18 to 65 years of age at the Hemoacre blood center in 2010-2011. Mean serum Cd was 0.37µg/L (95%CI: 0.33-0.41). Increased serum Cd was associated with lower schooling; individuals with less than five years of schooling showed a mean Cd of 0.61µg/L (95%CI: 0.34-0.89), compared to 0.34µg/L (95%CI: 0.28-0.40) among those with more than nine years of schooling. Mean serum Cd was three times higher among smokers. Smoking showed a positive association with Cd level, with an OR of 12.36 (95%CI: 7.70-19.84). Meanwhile, serum Cd was lower among individuals that regularly drank tea, as compared to non-tea drinkers. Serum Cd levels were mostly below the reference value (88.3% of participants). Mean serum Cd in the current study indicates that in general the population studied here is not exposed to worrisome Cd levels.

Determinants of serum cadmium levels in a Northern Italy community: A cross-sectional study

“…It is also possible that higher levels of Cd exposure than those experienced by our study population are required to detect stronger relations between serum Cd and the sources of exposure investigated. In our study, serum Cd levels were weakly and statistically imprecisely associated with body mass and showed some inverse association with age, unlike other investigations which found a gradually increasing Cd body burden with age (Alessio et al, 1993;dell'Omo et al, 1999;Madeddu et al, 2009;Forte et al, 2011;Madeddu et al, 2011;Faro et al, 2014;Freire et al, 2015;Yang et al, 2015), though not all studies are consistent (Roggi et al, 1995;Moreno et al, 1999). This might be due to the low sample size in our study or, alternatively, indicate a different behavior of serum Cd levels compared with blood or erythrocytes Cd in relation to age, which warrants further investigation.…”

“…Also considering the long biological half-life of Cd, 10-20 years (DFG Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, 2006), these observations suggest that serum Cd levels are considerably stabler than those in whole blood or erythrocytes and are less influenced long-term by external sources of exposure, though large studies using both multiple biomarkers of exposure are clearly required to confirm such hypothesis. It should also be noted that, compared with the limited biomonitoring studies which used serum Cd, the levels found in our study population were similar (Minoia et al, 1990;Alimonti et al, 2005;Goullé et al, 2005) or lower (Krachler et al, 1999;Rahil-Khazen et al, 2000;Hossny et al, 2001;Faro et al, 2014;Wang et al, 2016), also falling below the recently estimated EFSA limits (European Food Safety Authority, 2012), since the weekly average Cd intake in our study was 1.38 mg/Kg (upper 95th percentile 2.92 mg/Kg). It is also possible that higher levels of Cd exposure than those experienced by our study population are required to detect stronger relations between serum Cd and the sources of exposure investigated.…”

Analysis of Blood Concentrations of Zinc, Germanium, and Lead and Relevant Environmental Factors in a Population Sample from Shandong Province, China

“…Because Pb is widespread and harmful biomonitoring studies have been conducted in many countries [87,88,89,90]. Data from the present study revealed GM concentration of BPb to be 24.1 μg/L, which is lower than that observed in Brazilian, Czech, Danish, Italian, and Spanish studies, but higher than in that in American, Korean, Canadian, and Australian studies [79].…”