Effect of exposure to persistent toxic pollutants (PTPs) on the incidence of cancer disease in the Canarian population: a review

Abstract

Organochlorine pesticides (OCs) have been associated with some chronic diseases, such as breast cancer, diabetes and obesity. In the present study have investigated the effects of some OCs, individually and in combination, which had been previously detected in the human serum of the Canarian population, on normal human mammary epithelial cells (HMEC) at concentrations close to those found in human beings. The OCs studied were: aldrin, dieldrin, o,p’-DDE, p,p’-DDE, p,p’-DDD, o,p’-DDT, p,p’-DDT. Organochlorines have similar properties to estrogen, and these chemicals have been associated with estrogen-dependent breast cancer. When studying the effect exerted by 17β-estradiol on HMEC, it was found that the cell viability profile exposed to estradiol was similar to that obtained in the HMEC exposed to the OC-DDTs mixture. Emphasizing therefore that the effects exerted by one of the most important mixtures of organochlorines could be related to the known estrogenic propierties of these chemicals (PF Valerón et al., 2009). The effect exerted for the H-mixture and BC-mixture environmentally relevant on the gene expression profile, found in healthy women and patients with breast cancer in mammary epithelial cells was clearly different, while the H-mixture decreased the expression of tumour supressor genes (EPHA4 and EPHB2), the BC-mixture increased the expression of oncogenes associated with breast cancer (GFRA1, BHLHB8) (Javier Rivero et al., 2016).