Department of Urology, Giresun University Faculty of Medicine, Giresun, Turkey.
Department of Biology, Giresun University Faculty of Arts and Scienc, Giresun, Turkey.
BMC Urol. 2024 May 14;24(1):106. doi: 10.1186/s12894-024-01495-8.
Microplastics are ubiquitous, widespread environmental pollutants with unavoidable human exposure. Herein, it was aimed to investigate the presence of microplastics in prostate tissue.
Prostate tissues from 12 patients who underwent Trans Urethral Resection of the Prostate (TUR-P) were analyzed to investigate the presence of microplastics. Initially, the prostate tissues were analyzed for microplastic particles using a light microscope after extraction. Subsequently, the chemical composition of the particles found in the prostate tissues was characterized using Attenuated Total Reflection-Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectrophotometry.
Microplastic particles of various types were detected in 6 out of 12 patients. All detected plastic particles in this study were microplastics, with sizes below 26 μm in size. These microplastics exhibited different shapes as pellets, spheres or fibers. Overall, among the 12 analyzed prostate tissue samples, four different types of plastic were identified in six samples. The most common type of microplastic detected was Polyamide (Nylon 6), found in samples from three patients. Other detected types, Polypropylene, Polyacrylic Acid and Poly (dimethylsiloxane) were each determined in samples from one patient.
This is the first study to demonstrate the presence of microplastics in prostate tissue, serving as an exploratory investigation, which can trigger further research to validate the results in a larger patient cohort.
微塑料是无处不在、广泛存在的环境污染物，人类不可避免地会与之接触。在此，我们旨在研究前列腺组织中微塑料的存在情况。
分析了 12 名接受经尿道前列腺切除术（TUR-P）的患者的前列腺组织，以调查微塑料的存在情况。首先，通过提取后使用光学显微镜分析前列腺组织中的微塑料颗粒。然后，使用衰减全反射-傅里叶变换红外光谱（ATR-FTIR）分光光度法对前列腺组织中发现的颗粒的化学组成进行了表征。
在 12 名患者中有 6 名患者检测到了不同类型的微塑料颗粒。本研究中检测到的所有塑料颗粒均为微塑料，尺寸小于 26μm。这些微塑料呈现出不同的形状，如小球、球体或纤维。总的来说，在分析的 12 个前列腺组织样本中，在 6 个样本中鉴定出了 4 种不同类型的塑料。检测到的最常见的微塑料类型是聚酰胺（尼龙 6），在 3 名患者的样本中发现。其他检测到的类型，如聚丙烯、聚丙烯酸和聚二甲基硅氧烷，分别在 1 名患者的样本中确定。
这是第一项证明前列腺组织中存在微塑料的研究，作为一项探索性研究，可以进一步研究以验证在更大的患者队列中的结果。
