Useful biomarkers for assessing the adverse health effects of PCBs in allergic children: pediatric molecular epidemiology

Abstract

The incidences of childhood allergies have been increasing

Relationship of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) with parasitism, iron homeostasis, and other health outcomes: Results from a cross-sectional study on recently arrived African immigrants

“…As mentioned above, 25.6% of participants had parasites in stool, and moreover these people had higher median levels of eosinophils than non-parasitized participants, an association which has been well established in the literature (Pardo et al, 2006). As it was exposed, we found an inverse relationship between parasitism and PCB levels, when we expected the opposite since PCBs are considered immunosuppresor chemicals (Sagerup et al, 2009;Tsuji, 2015). Therefore, it may be logical to expect a higher parasite infection as a consequence of an impaired immune system with increasing PCB pollution (Sagerup et al, 2009).…”

“…PCBs have been classified as carcinogenic to humans by the IARC (Lauby-Secretan et al, 2013) and have been linked to many health concerns involving the reproductive (Buck Louis et al, 2009), endocrine (Hagmar, 2003;Luzardo et al, 2012b), neurological (Longnecker et al, 2003), immune system (Tsuji, 2015) and cancer (Arrebola et al, 2015). Although most studies devoted to evaluate adverse health effects exerted by these pollutants in humans have been performed in series of occupationally exposed people or in subjects affected by acute intoxications (Yorifuji et al, 2013), a number of adverse health effects have been also described in general population in relation to chronic environmental exposure to PCBs (Carpenter, 2006;Vaiserman, 2014).…”