Longitudinal Study of Metabolic Biomarkers among Conventional and Organic Farmers in Thailand

Abstract

The aim of this longitudinal study is to assess how pesticide use may impact metabolic biomarkers by collecting and comparing data from conventional (n = 13) and organic farmers (n = 225) every eight months for four rounds. Farmers were interviewed about family health history, food consumption behaviors, self-reported health problems, agricultural activities, and history of pesticide use. Systolic and diastolic blood pressure and body mass index (BMI) were measured. Blood samples were collected for total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL), high-density lipoprotein (HDL), blood glucose, and triglycerides. A linear mixed model with random intercepts for subjects was used to compare the metabolic biomarkers between conventional and organic farmers and to examine the impact of the number of pesticide spray days for all four rounds after controlling for covariates. The conventional farmers reported using insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides. The marginal means for chemical farmers were significantly higher than organic farmers for total cholesterol, LDL, HDL, glucose, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, BMI, and waist circumference. Increasing the number of days of spraying either insecticides or fungicides was associated with an increase in HDL, LDL, and cholesterol levels. Increasing the number of herbicide spray days was associated with an increase in systolic and diastolic blood pressure and a decrease in BMI. These findings suggest that pesticide-using conventional farmers may be at higher risk of metabolic disease in the future.

Psychological and Physical Health of Organic and Conventional Farmers: A Review

“…Thirteen studies reported quantitative physical health data. Physiological parameters (e.g., thyroid hormones, cholesterol, lymphocytes percentages) were measured in five studies [33][34][35][36][37]. Physical health was evaluated with the SF-36, the EQ-D5, and the VAS by Cross et al (2008) [28].…”

“…Costa et al ( 2014) noticed that both organic and conventional farmers had higher or lower physiological parameters than the control group [33]. Other indicators, such as body mass index (BMI), thyroids hormones, cholesterol, are globally lower among organic farmers compared to conventional farmers [34][35][36][37]. Within sixty-nine symptoms tested in five studies, ten were more frequent among organic farmers (e.g., chest pain, frequent urination), and nineteen were less present (e.g., sensory symptoms, wheezing with shortness of breath) [17,18,29,30,38].…”

Similarity Effect and Purchase Behavior of Organic Food Under the Mediating Role of Perceived Values in the Context of COVID-19

“…Stevens (2020) and Newburn (2020) pointed out that, especially in the context of COVID-19, the impact of consumer's gender differences on behavior and attitude is more and more obvious. In addition, asymmetric information in organic market, uncertainty and insufficient marketing were identified as the key factors hindering consumers to buy organic food (Teng and Lu, 2016;Hidalgo-Baz et al, 2017;Liu and Zheng, 2019;Kongtip et al, 2020;Wang et al, 2020;Xie et al, 2020). With the development of new media, consumers get more and more information from various media.…”

Acute Changes in Thyroid Hormone Levels among Thai Pesticide Sprayers

“…Several specific herbicides had a significant relationship between the amount applied and an increase in thyroid hormone levels [ 12 ], and increasing the cumulative number of spray days of pesticides significantly increases the level of thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) and free triiodothyronine (FT3) [ 13 ]. These farmers also had significantly higher abnormal metabolic biomarkers, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, % body fat, triglycerides, total cholesterol, and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) values) compared to the organic farmers [ 36 ], and there was a significant association between the number of days of pesticide spraying and levels of cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL), LDL, blood pressure and BMI in the longitudinal cohort [ 37 ]. These findings support the proposal that pesticides may function as endocrine disrupters, in part through the HPT axis, increasing the risk for abnormal metabolic biomarkers which are linked to the development of long term metabolic disease (Cardiovacular disease, stroke, diabetes).…”