Department of Preventative Medicine, School of Medicine, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Republic of Korea; BK21 Plus KNU Biomedical Convergence Program, Department of Biomedical Science, Kyungpook National University, Republic of Korea.
Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, United States.
Environ Int. 2017 Nov;108:170-175. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2017.08.015. Epub 2017 Aug 31.
The Halifax project recently hypothesized a composite carcinogenic potential of the mixture of low dose chemicals which are commonly encountered environmentally, yet which are not classified as human carcinogens. A long neglected but important fact is that adipose tissue is an important exposure source for chemical mixtures. In fact, findings from human studies based on several persistent organic pollutants in general populations with only background exposure should be interpreted from the viewpoint of chemical mixtures because serum concentrations of these chemicals can be seen as surrogates for chemical mixtures in adipose tissue. Furthermore, in conditions such as obesity with dysfunctional adipocytes or weight loss in which lipolysis is increased, the amount of the chemical mixture released from adipose tissue to circulation is increased. Thus, both obesity and weight loss can enhance the chance of chemical mixtures reaching critical organs, however paradoxical this idea may be when fat mass is the only factor considered. The complicated, interrelated dynamics of adipocytes and chemical mixtures can explain puzzling findings related to body weight among cancer patients, including the obesity paradox. The contamination of fat in human diet with chemical mixtures, occurring for reasons similar to contamination of human adipose tissue, may be a missing factor which affects the association between dietary fat intake and cancer. The presence of chemical mixtures in adipose tissue should be considered in future cancer research, including clinical trials on weight management among cancer survivors.
哈利法克斯项目最近假设，环境中常见的低剂量化学物质混合物具有复合致癌潜力，尽管这些化学物质尚未被归类为人类致癌物。一个长期被忽视但重要的事实是，脂肪组织是化学混合物的一个重要暴露源。事实上，基于一般人群中几种持久性有机污染物的仅有背景暴露的人类研究结果，应从化学混合物的角度来解释，因为这些化学物质的血清浓度可以被视为脂肪组织中化学混合物的替代物。此外，在肥胖或脂肪分解增加的情况下，脂肪组织向循环系统释放的化学混合物的量会增加。因此，肥胖和体重减轻都可以增加化学混合物到达关键器官的机会，尽管当脂肪量是唯一考虑的因素时，这个想法可能有些矛盾。脂肪细胞和化学混合物之间复杂的、相互关联的动态可以解释与癌症患者体重相关的一些令人费解的发现，包括肥胖悖论。由于与人类脂肪组织污染类似的原因，人类饮食中的脂肪受到化学混合物的污染，这可能是一个缺失的因素，影响了饮食脂肪摄入与癌症之间的关联。在未来的癌症研究中，包括癌症幸存者体重管理的临床试验中，都应考虑脂肪组织中化学混合物的存在。
