生命早期邻苯二甲酸酯暴露与儿童肥胖关系的研究进展

Research progress on association between early-life exposure to phthalates and childhood obesity

邻苯二甲酸酯(PAEs)是一类具有致畸性、致癌性、致突变性和生殖毒性的环境污染物,严重影响人类的健康。作为重要的工业增塑剂之一,其广泛暴露导致的儿童超重和肥胖等不良健康效应已经引起人们的关注。生命早期阶段环境污染物暴露可以影响胎儿与新生儿的发育可塑性或发育编程,从而使儿童对环境污染物敏感性显著增强,甚至能够导致成年后一系列相关疾病的发生与恶化。本文主要介绍了PAEs的使用、暴露和测量评估的现状,有害效应机制,以及生命早期PAEs暴露的原因和影响,分别从人群流行病学研究和动物研究归纳了生命早期PAEs暴露与儿童脂肪过多/肥胖的关系及可能作用机制的研究进展;同时,揭示了生命早期PAEs暴露致儿童肥胖可能的跨代遗传效应,提出了目前研究中尚存在的化学物混合暴露、暴露错误分类、混杂因素以及性别差异问题及相应的解决方法,并对减少生命早期PAEs暴露以预防儿童肥胖进行了展望。

Phthalates(PAEs) are environmental pollutants with teratogenicity, carcinogenicity,mutagenicity, and reproductive toxicity, which seriously affect human health. As one ofthe important industrial plasticizers, the adverse health effects linked to their extensiveexposure, such as childhood overweight and obesity, have aroused wide concern. Exposure toenvironmental pollutants in the early stage of life may affect the developmental plasticity ordevelopmental programming of fetuses and newborns, significantly increasing the sensitivityof children to environmental pollutants and even leading to the occurrence and deteriorationof a series of related diseases in adulthood. This article introduced the current status of usage,exposure, and measurement of PAEs, the proposed mechanisms of harmful effects of PAEs, thecauses and effects of PAEs exposure in early life, and the relationships between early-life PAEsexposure and childhood fat excess/obesity from the perspectives of epidemiological and animalstudies and the underlying mechanism of action. At the same time, the article revealed thepotential transgenerational genetic effects of PAEs exposure in early life on childhood obesity,pointed out the problems including exposure to chemical mixtures, exposure misclassification,confounders, and sexual dimorphism in current research and corresponding solutions, andprospected for future studies on reducing early-life PAEs exposure to prevent childhood obesity.