Assessing human health risk to endocrine disrupting chemicals: a focus on prenatal exposures and oxidative stress

Abstract

Understanding the health risk posed by endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) is a challenge that is receiving intense attention. The following study criteria should be considered to facilitate risk assessment for exposure to EDCs: 1) characterization of target health outcomes and their mediators, 2) study of exposures in the context of critical periods of development, 3) accurate estimates of human exposures and use of human-relevant exposures in animal studies, and 4) cross-species comparisons. In this commentary, we discuss the importance and relevance of each of these criteria in studying the effects of prenatal exposure to EDCs. Our discussion focuses on oxidative stress as a mediator of EDC-related health effects due to its association with both EDC exposure and health outcomes. Our recent study (Veiga-Lopez et al. 2015)(1) addressed each of the four outlined criteria and demonstrated that prenatal bisphenol-A exposure is associated with oxidative stress, a risk factor for developing diabetes and cardiovascular diseases in adulthood.