¹Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY 10029, USA.
Institute for Translational Epidemiology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY 10029, USA.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Jan 22;17(3):712. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17030712.
Besides specific, incidental radiation exposure, which has been associated with increased thyroid cancer risk, the effects of exposure to background radiation from uranium, a naturally occurring, radioactive, and ubiquitous element, on the thyroid gland has not been widely studied. We therefore investigated the association between uranium exposure and thyroid health in the US. Using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), we assessed the association between urinary uranium levels and thyroid-related antibodies, including thyroglobulin antibodies (TgAb) and anti-thyroid peroxidase (anti-TPO), in the general population. Secondly, we performed an ecological study of age-adjusted thyroid cancer incidence rates per state and sources of uranium exposure. We included 3125 eligible participants from the NHANES and found a significant association between increased TgAb and increased urinary uranium levels when analyzed as quartiles ( = 0.0105), while no association was found with anti-TPO. In addition, although no significant correlation was found in the ecological study, certain states had high age-adjusted thyroid cancer incidence rates and a high number of uranium activity locations and high uranium concentrations in water. The present study suggests that uranium exposure may affect thyroid health, which warrants increased sampling of soil and water in high-risk states.
除了与甲状腺癌风险增加相关的特定、偶然的辐射暴露外，铀（一种天然存在的放射性普遍元素）背景辐射暴露对甲状腺的影响尚未得到广泛研究。因此，我们在美国研究了铀暴露与甲状腺健康之间的关系。我们利用国家健康和营养检查调查（NHANES），评估了一般人群中尿铀水平与甲状腺相关抗体（包括甲状腺球蛋白抗体（TgAb）和抗甲状腺过氧化物酶（抗 TPO））之间的关联。其次，我们对各州的年龄调整甲状腺癌发病率和铀暴露源进行了生态研究。我们从 NHANES 中纳入了 3125 名符合条件的参与者，发现当分析为四分位数时，TgAb 增加与尿铀水平增加呈显著相关（ = 0.0105），而与抗 TPO 无关联。此外，尽管在生态研究中未发现显著相关性，但某些州的年龄调整甲状腺癌发病率高，铀活动地点数量多，水中铀浓度高。本研究表明，铀暴露可能会影响甲状腺健康，这需要在高风险州增加土壤和水的采样。
