Coulston F, Wills J H
Environ Qual Saf Suppl. 1976(5):238-52.
The principal types of hormonal agents used in the production of meat for human consumption are estrogens, progestagens, and androgens. Only the last class is truly anabolic. Each type of compound named above has fairly characteristic toxic effects after prolonged intake. In this review, an attempt will be made to relate available information from experience with the administration of these three types of hormones to humans to the question whether sufficient amounts of these chemicals can remain in meat cut from carcasses of animals administered hormones during finishing to have deletarious effects on human ingesters. Present indications are that administration of stilbestrol to pregnant women may result in a somewhat increased incidence of cervical and vaginal cancers in their daughters; such administration appears to have no effect on the incidence of cancers in sons and only slight, if any, effect on that in the mothers. Other estrogens seem to have no specific effects on the incidence of cancer. Progestagens also are not known to induce any specific lesions. Although many androgens are known to produce edema, fever, and jaundice, they have not been found to cause specific lesions to any significant extent. With reference to stilbestrol, the doses given to the mothers of affected children have ranged between 5 and 125 mg/day. Because muscle, liver, and kidney from steers treated with stilbestrol in the usual way (s. c. implantation of a pellet at the base of an ear) have been found to contain less than 0.5 ppb of stilbestrol one month after implantation of the pellet, it is obvious that, to approach even the lowest clinically used dose of stilbestrol, a person would have to eat daily a quantity of such animal products that would be impossible to ingest. The findings that a mean of 26.4% of an oral dose of stilbestrol is excreted within 24 hours and that 99.5% is excreted within a week indicate that cumulation of this chemical within the body from the low level of intake provided by meats is not likely to reach a significant level. This would be so even though the animal product contained more than the 0.5 ppb mentioned above.
用于生产供人类食用肉类的主要激素制剂类型为雌激素、孕激素和雄激素。只有最后一类才是真正的合成代谢激素。上述每种化合物在长期摄入后都有相当典型的毒性作用。在本综述中，将尝试把有关这三种激素对人类给药的经验中的现有信息与以下问题联系起来：在育肥期间接受激素处理的动物胴体切割的肉中，是否会残留足够量的这些化学物质，从而对食用者产生有害影响。目前的迹象表明，给孕妇服用己烯雌酚可能会使其女儿患宫颈癌和阴道癌的发病率略有增加；这种给药似乎对儿子的癌症发病率没有影响，对母亲的癌症发病率即使有影响也很轻微。其他雌激素似乎对癌症发病率没有特定影响。孕激素也未被发现会诱发任何特定病变。尽管已知许多雄激素会导致水肿、发热和黄疸，但尚未发现它们会在很大程度上引起特定病变。关于己烯雌酚，给受影响儿童的母亲服用的剂量范围为每天5至125毫克。因为用通常方法（在耳根部皮下植入药丸）用己烯雌酚处理过的公牛的肌肉、肝脏和肾脏在植入药丸一个月后被发现含有低于0.5 ppb的己烯雌酚，很明显，即使要达到临床上使用的最低己烯雌酚剂量，一个人每天也必须食用大量此类动物产品，而这是不可能摄入的。口服己烯雌酚剂量的平均值在24小时内有26.4%排出，一周内有99.5%排出，这一发现表明，肉类提供的低摄入量使这种化学物质在体内的累积不太可能达到显著水平。即使动物产品中含有的己烯雌酚超过上述的0.5 ppb，情况也是如此。
