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Paraben Exposure Related To Purine Metabolism and Other Pathways Revealed by Mass Spectrometry-Based Metabolomics
journal contribution
posted on 2020-03-06, 12:35 authored by Hongzhi Zhao, Yuanyuan Zheng, Lin Zhu, Li Xiang, Yanqiu Zhou, Jiufeng Li, Jing Fang, Shunqing Xu, Wei Xia, Zongwei CaiParabens
are widely used as common preservatives in the pharmaceutical
and cosmetic industries. Exposure to parabens has been found to be
associated with metabolic alterations of human and an increased risk
of metabolic disease, such as diabetes. However, limited information
is available about metabolic pathways related to paraben exposure.
In this study, three parabens were determined in the urine samples
of 88 pregnant women by using ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography
coupled with triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (UHPLC-QqQ MS). The
samples were divided into different groups based on tertile distribution
of urinary paraben concentrations. Metabolic profiling of the 88 urine
samples was performed by using UHPLC coupled with Orbitrap high-resolution
MS. Differential metabolites were screened by comparing the profiles
of urine samples from different paraben-exposure groups. The identified
metabolites included purines, acylcarnitines, etc., revealing that
metabolic pathways such as purine metabolism, fatty acid β-oxidation,
and other pathways were disturbed by parabens. Eighteen and three
metabolites were correlated (Spearman correlation analysis, p < 0.05) with the exposure levels of methyparaben and
propylparaben, respectively. This is the first MS-based nontargeted
metabolomics study on pregnant women with paraben exposure. The findings
reveal the potential health risk of exposure to parabens and might
help one to understand the link between paraben exposure and some
metabolic diseases.