Environmental exposure to arsenic may reduce human semen quality: associations derived from a Chinese cross-sectional study

Environmental Health

Research

Lianbing Li¹  Chuanhai Li¹  Huaqiong Bao¹  Min Cai¹  Jianwen She²  Sijun Dong³  Heqing Shen³  Liangpo Liu³  Feng Liu³  Weipan Xu³  Yong-Guan Zhu³ 

[1] Chongqing Key Laboratory of Birth Defects and Reproductive Health, The Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Institute for Population and Family Planning, 400020, Chongqing, China;Environmental Health Laboratory Branch, California Department of Public Health, 94804, Richmond, CA, USA;Key Lab of Urban Environment and Health, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 1799 Jimei Road, 361021, Xiamen, China;

关键词: Arsenic;    China;    Cross-sectional study;    Human reproduction;    Semen quality;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1476-069X-11-46

 received in 2012-02-21, accepted in 2012-07-09,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundRecent observations in in vitro and in vivo models suggest that arsenic (As) is an endocrine disruptor at environmentally-relevant levels. When exposed to As, male rats and mice show steroidogenic dysfunction that can lead to infertility. However, the possible effects of As on human male semen quality remain obscure.MethodsWe monitored the profile of As species in the urine of a reproductive-age human cohort and assessed its association with semen quality. Men (n = 96) were recruited in an infertility clinic from July 2009 to August 2010 in the Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Institute for Population and Family Planning. Five urinary As species were analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (HPLC-ICP-MS). Clinical information on the semen volume, sperm concentration and motility was employed to catalogue and evaluate semen quality according to WHO guidelines. As species concentrations in addition to other continuous variables were dichotomized by the medians and modelled as categorical variables in order to explore using the binary logistic regression possible associations between As exposure and semen quality.ResultsUrinary concentrations (geometric mean ± SD, μg g-1 creatinine) of different As species were 7.49 (±24.8) for AsB, 20.9 (±13.7) for DMA, 2.77 (±3.33) for MMA, and 4.03 (±3.67) for Asi (AsiIII and AsiV). DMA concentrations above the median were significantly associated with below-reference sperm concentrations (P =0.02) after adjusting for age, body mass index (BMI), abstinence, smoking and drinking habits. In addition, smoking was positively associated with MMA.ConclusionReduced parameters in human semen quality are positively associated with As exposure in a reproductive-age Chinese cohort.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Xu et al.licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.