Engineering: Common chemicals could affect fertility

 

Submitting developing sheep foetus to low doses of chemicals commonly found in the environment can disturb the development of the ovary, a scientist said today.

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Dr Paul Fowler of the University of Aberdeen said that this research would help to establish the importance of the effects of environmental chemicals on fertility.

He presented the research at the 23rd annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.

In the last twenty years, there has been a dramatic increase in industrial and agricultural chemicals and heavy metals in the environment, which has coincided with widespread reports of breeding problems in wild animals.

Fertility also appears to be declining among humans and there has also been a rise in reproductive defects observed in newborn babies.

Until now, most studies have looked at a short-lived exposure to high doses of single compounds, and have usually done so in mice and rats.

Dr Fowler and his colleagues decided to study the effect of long-term, low-level exposure to a cocktail of chemicals and heavy metals in an animal with a long pregnancy, therefore better replicating the situation in humans.

Abnormalities found

"Our ‘real life’ model exposed developing sheep foetuses by pasturing their mothers on fields fertilised with either inorganic fertiliser, the control group, or, in the case of the treatment group, with digested human sewage sludge, before and during pregnancy," explained Dr Fowler.

"We examined the ovaries from the fetuses at day 110 of gestation, the equivalent of week 27 in a human pregnancy, and found that the ovaries from the foetuses where the mother was grazing the sewage sludge fields contained fewer eggs and also a number of protein abnormalities.

"These differences could have implications for problems such as cancer in later life," Fowler added.

The scientists hope that their Wellcome Trust-funded study will help to pinpoint the stages of pregnancy at which the developing fetus is most sensitive to disruption.

They also want to measure the degree to which fertility is affected in the offspring after puberty, following their exposure as foetuses to environmental concentrations of a mixture of pollutants.

There is still considerable debate around the level of importance of environmental chemicals in cancer, obesity, infertility and other complex diseases that have multiple causes.

"We hope our research will help in the drive for evidence-based policy making on this issue," said Dr Fowler.

"If we can definitely establish that environmental chemicals are important in triggering these diseases, then we might be able to produce better treatments, but it would also be important to devise legislation to begin reducing the levels of such chemicals.

"We would then look to work with chemical and agricultural industries to find safer chemicals by improving how they assess fetal development effects," he added.

"If such measures helped to reduce the rates of cancer, obesity and infertility, there would be considerable benefits in terms of the costs of healthcare."

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