School of Pharmacy, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, 210023, China.
Department of Occupational Disease, Jiangsu Provincial Center for Disease Prevention and Control, Nanjing, 210009, China.
Chemosphere. 2022 Jul;298:134308. doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2022.134308. Epub 2022 Mar 14.
Glyphosate is one of the most widely used herbicide with high efficiency, low toxicity and broad-spectrum. In recent decades, increasing evidence suggests that glyphosate may cause adverse health effects on human beings. However, until now, there is little data on the human metabolic changes. Since occupational workers are under greater health risks than ordinary people, the understanding regarding the health effects of glyphosate on occupational workers is very important for the early warning of potential damage. In this study, serum metabolic alterations in workers from three chemical factories were analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to assess the potential health risks caused by glyphosate at the molecular level. It was found that the levels of 27 metabolites changed significantly in the exposed group compared to the controls. The altered metabolic pathways, including amino acid metabolism, energy metabolism (glycolysis and TCA cycle) and glutathione metabolism (oxidative stress), etc., indicated a series of changes occur in health profile of the human body after glyphosate exposure, and the suboptimal health status of human may further evolve into various diseases, such as Parkinson's disease, renal and liver dysfunction, hepatocellular carcinoma, and colorectal cancer. Subsequently, 4 biomarkers (i.e., benzoic acid, 2-ketoisocaproic acid, alpha-ketoglutarate, and monoolein) were identified as potential biomarkers related to glyphosate exposure based on the partial correlation analyses, linear regression analyses, and FDR correction. Receiver-operating curve (ROC) analyses manifested that these potential biomarkers and their combinational pattern had good performance and potential clinical value to assess the potential health risk associated with glyphosate exposure while retaining high accuracy. Our findings provided new insights on mechanisms of health effects probably induced by glyphosate, and may be valuable for the health risk assessment of glyphosate exposure.
草甘膦是一种应用广泛、高效、低毒、广谱的除草剂。近几十年来，越来越多的证据表明草甘膦可能对人类健康产生不良影响。然而，到目前为止，关于人类代谢变化的数据很少。由于职业工人比普通人面临更大的健康风险，因此了解草甘膦对职业工人的健康影响对于潜在损害的早期预警非常重要。在这项研究中，通过气相色谱-质谱联用（GC-MS）分析了来自三家化工厂工人的血清代谢变化，以评估草甘膦在分子水平上对健康造成的潜在风险。结果发现，暴露组与对照组相比，有 27 种代谢物的水平发生了显著变化。改变的代谢途径，包括氨基酸代谢、能量代谢（糖酵解和 TCA 循环）和谷胱甘肽代谢（氧化应激）等，表明草甘膦暴露后人体健康状况发生了一系列变化，人体的亚最佳健康状况可能进一步演变成各种疾病，如帕金森病、肾功能和肝功能障碍、肝细胞癌和结直肠癌。随后，通过偏相关分析、线性回归分析和 FDR 校正，基于 4 种生物标志物（即苯甲酸、2-酮异己酸、α-酮戊二酸和单油酸甘油酯）被鉴定为与草甘膦暴露相关的潜在生物标志物。接受者操作特征曲线（ROC）分析表明，这些潜在的生物标志物及其组合模式具有良好的性能和潜在的临床价值，可用于评估与草甘膦暴露相关的潜在健康风险，同时保持高准确性。我们的研究结果为草甘膦可能引起的健康影响机制提供了新的见解，可能对草甘膦暴露的健康风险评估具有重要价值。
