| Bone Mineral Density Changes in Relation to Environmental PCB Exposure Susan Hodgson,1,2 Laura Thomas,2 Elena Fattore,3 P. Monica Lind,4 Tobias Alfven,4 Lennart Hellström,5,6 Helen Håkansson,4 Grazia Carubelli,3 Roberto Fanelli,3 and Lars Jarup2 1Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom; 2Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Imperial College London, United Kingdom; 3Department of Environmental Health Sciences, "Mario Negri" Institute for Pharmacological Research, Milano, Italy; 4Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden; 5Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health, County Council of Kalmar, Oskarshamn, Sweden; 6Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Department of Molecular and Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden Abstract
Background: Bone toxicity has been linked to organochlorine exposure following a few notable poisoning incidents, but epidemiologic studies in populations with environmental organochlorine exposure have yielded inconsistent results. Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate whether organochlorine exposure was associated with bone mineral density (BMD) in a population 60–81 years of age (154 males, 167 females) living near the Baltic coast, close to a river contaminated by polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) . Methods: We measured forearm BMD in participants using dual energy X-ray absorptiometry ; and we assessed low BMD using age- and sex-standardized Z-scores. We analyzed blood samples for five dioxin-like PCBs, the three most abundant non-dioxin-like PCBs, and p,p´-dichlorophenyldichloroethylene (p,p´-DDE) . Results: In males, dioxin-like chlorobiphenyl (CB) -118 was negatively associated with BMD ; the odds ratio for low BMD (Z-score less than –1) was 1.06 (95% confidence interval, 1.01–1.12) per 10 pg/mL CB-118. The sum of the three most abundant non-dioxin-like PCBs was positively associated with BMD, but not with a decreased risk of low BMD. In females, CB-118 was positively associated with BMD, but this congener did not influence the risk of low BMD in women. Conclusions: Environmental organochlorine exposures experienced by this population sample since the 1930s in Sweden may have been sufficient to result in sex-specific changes in BMD. Key words: bone mineral density, p, p´-DDE, polychlorinated biphenyls, toxic equivalents. Environ Health Perspect 116:1162–1166 (2008) . doi:10.1289/ehp.11107 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 16 May 2008]
Address correspondence to S. Hodgson, Institute of Health and Society, 4th Floor, William Leech Building, The Medical School, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE2 4HH, UK. Telephone: 44 (0) 191 222 3823. Fax: 44 (0) 191 222 8211. E-mail: susan.hodgson@ncl.ac.uk Supplemental Material is available online at http://www.ehponline.org/members/2008/11107/suppl.pdf We thank the European Commission (EU-QLK-CT-2002-02528) and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency for financial support. Ethical approval for this study was obtained from the Karolinska Institutet ethics committee. The authors declare they have no competing financial interests. Received 29 November 2007 ; accepted 12 May 2008.
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