(Press-News.org) Bisphenol A (BPA) is a controversial chemical widely used in the plastics industry. A new study followed people over a 10-year time period and shows that healthy people with higher urine concentrations of BPA were more likely to later develop heart disease.
The study was carried out by researchers at the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, the University of Exeter and the European Centre for the Environment and Human Health, in association with the University of Cambridge. The analysis was funded by the British Heart Foundation. The paper is published online in Circulation – a Journal of the American Heart Association.
The research team had previously identified the link between BPA and the increased risk of cardiovascular disease by using two sets of US data, which are effectively snapshots in time. The previous data showed a correlation between exposure to BPA and cardiovascular disease but it could not help researchers to predict how exposure to the chemical might affect future health.
The most recent study uses data from the European Prospective Investigation of Cancer (EPIC) in Norfolk, UK, a long term population study led by the University of Cambridge, supported by the Medical Research Council UK and Cancer Research UK. It is the first time that data has been used to establish a link between exposure to BPA and future onset of cardiovascular disease.
The study compared urine BPA measures from 758 initially healthy EPIC study respondents who later developed cardiovascular disease, and 861 respondents who remained heart disease free. The findings of the study show that those who developed heart disease tended to have higher urinary BPA concentrations at the start of the 10-year period. The extent of the effect is very difficult to estimate given that just one urine specimen from each participant was available for testing at the beginning of the 10-year follow-up.
Professor David Melzer of the Peninsula Medical School, who led the team, said: "This study strengthens the statistical link between BPA and heart disease, but we can't be certain that BPA itself is responsible. It is now important that government agencies organise drug style safety trials of BPA in humans, as much basic information about how BPA behaves in the human body is still unknown."
Professor Tamara Galloway of the University of Exeter, senior author on the paper, said: "If BPA itself is directly responsible for this increase in risk, the size of effect is difficult to estimate. However, it adds to the evidence that BPA may be an additional contributor to heart disease risk alongside the major risk factors, such as smoking, high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels."
BPA is one of the world's highest production volume chemicals. The global population is exposed to BPA primarily through packaged food and drink, but also through drinking water, dental sealants, exposure to the skin and the inhalation of household dust.
###
To access the paper: http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/early/2012/02/21/CIRCULATIONAHA.111.069153.full.pdf?ijkey=zyYQNfz2ya0mZ0c&keytype=ref
The Peninsula Medical School is a joint entity of the University of Exeter, the University of Plymouth and the NHS in the South West of England, and a partner of the Combined Universities in Cornwall. The Peninsula Medical School has created for itself an excellent national and international reputation for groundbreaking research in the areas of diabetes and obesity, neurological disease, child development and ageing, clinical education, health and the environment and health technology assessment. The Peninsula Medical School is licensed under the Human Tissue Act to hold ethically acquired human tissue.
The Peninsula Dental School was established in 2006 following a successful bid by the Peninsula Medical School. It is a joint entity of the University of Exeter and the University of Plymouth, and the NHS throughout Devon and Cornwall. It is the first new dental school in the UK for 40 years. Its first cohort of students graduated in July 2011.
The University of Exeter is a leading UK university and in the top one percent of institutions globally. It combines world-class research with very high levels of student satisfaction. Exeter is ranked 9th in The Sunday Times University Guide, 10th in the UK in The Times Good University Guide 2012 and 11th in the Guardian University Guide 2012. In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 90% of the University's research was rated as being at internationally recognised levels and 16 of its 31 subjects are ranked in the top 10, with 27 subjects ranked in the top 20.
The University has over 17,000 students and is developing its campuses in Exeter and Cornwall with almost £350 million worth of new facilities due for completion by 2012.
www.exeter.ac.uk
For further information:
Andrew Gould
The Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry
+44 (0)1884 38346
+44 (0)7971 966 283
Email: andrew.gould@pcmd.ac.uk
Sarah Hoyle
Media Relations Manager
University of Exeter
+44 (0)1392 722062 / +44 (0)7827 309332
s.hoyle@exeter.ac.uk
END
In an exclusive interview with Physics World, astronaut Drew Feustel gives a vivid account of his two missions into space and recalls his determination to make his childhood ambition – space flight – come true.
In the video, Feustel discusses his two missions – his maiden flight in 2009, as part of a team sent to repair the Hubble Space telescope, and his return to space in 2011 as the lead spacewalker on Endeavour's final mission to the International Space Station.
Recalling the first moments of launch, when you're sitting on the launch pad and the countdown hits ...
Researchers at the universities of Granada and Jaén, Spain, have discovered why recalling some items from memory reduces our ability to recall other related items. In the field of Psychology, this phenomenon is known as "Retrieval-Induced Forgetting" (RIF), and researchers have determined the cognitive process that causes this phenomenon and its duration.
To carry out this study, the researchers designed a set of memory tasks where the participants had to learn a material and then recall it partially. Memory tasks had different levels of difficulty and included different ...
A 28-year comparative study of wild emmer wheat and wild barley populations has revealed that these progenitors of cultivated wheat and barley, which are the best hope for crop improvement, have undergone changes over this period of global warming. The changes present a real concern for their being a continued source of crop improvement.
Wheats and barleys are the staple food for humans and animal feed around the world, and their wild progenitors have undergone genetic changes over the last 28 years that imply a risk for crop improvement and food production, reveals a ...
Is there such a thing as a typical criminal career? This was the question addressed by criminologist Volker Grundies from the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg. This study examined the data of approximately 21,000 men from Baden-Württemberg, who had come into conflict with the law on one or more occasions. The results of his study challenge widely held criminological theories surrounding the development of delinquent behaviour in the life of an individual.
In this project, Grundies and his colleagues at the Freiburg-based Institute ...
A new report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice (NIJ) has documented 149 potential sources of human error in the analysis of crime scene fingerprints. The study by a working group of 34 experts recommends a series of improvements to significantly reduce or eliminate the errors, based on the findings from its three-year scientific assessment of the effects of human factors on forensic latent print analysis. The working group consisted of experts from various forensic disciplines, statisticians, ...
Cogent Road, a provider of innovative cloud-based mortgage technologies, has introduced GravityTM, the first mortgage-specific CRM/Lead Management System that helps loan officers obtain a loan commitment in a single call.
Gravity is the only cloud-based CRM/lead management system fully integrated with credit, 1003, FHA Scorecard, a pricing engine (Price My Loan), loan comparison tools and anti-steering disclosure, allowing loan originators to take a complete application, select and price a loan, accurately discuss financial benefits and qualify borrowers in one call. ...
WASHINGTON, Feb. 23, 2012 – National results indicate that tree cover in urban areas of the United States is declining at a rate of about 4 million trees per year, according to a U.S. Forest Service study published recently in Urban Forestry & Urban Greening.
Tree cover in 17 of the 20 cities analyzed in the study declined while 16 cities saw increases in impervious cover, which includes pavement and rooftops. Land that lost trees was for the most part converted to either grass or ground cover, impervious cover or bare soil.
Of the 20 cities analyzed, the greatest percentage ...
A case-control study from Newfoundland/Labrador has reported that greater alcohol intake may increase the risk of colorectal cancer (CRC) among obese subjects, but not among non-obese subjects. This is not a particularly large study, and only 45-60% of subjects who were recruited by telephone ended up providing data. Further, it is a case-control comparison, rather than a cohort analysis, making bias in the results more likely.
In this study, there was no relation of alcohol with the risk of CRC when considering the entire population. However, when subjects were ...
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The condensation of water is crucial to the operation of most of the powerplants that provide our electricity — whether they are fueled by coal, natural gas or nuclear fuel. It is also the key to producing potable water from salty or brackish water. But there are still large gaps in the scientific understanding of exactly how water condenses on the surfaces used to turn steam back into water in a powerplant, or to condense water in an evaporation-based desalination plant.
New research by a team at MIT offers important new insights into how these droplets ...
WASHINGTON, Feb. 23— In order to build the next generation of very large supercomputers, it's essential that scientists and engineers find a way to seamlessly scale computation performance without exceeding extraordinary power consumption. It is widely agreed that the major challenge to scaling future systems will no longer be the CMOS (Complementary Metal–Oxide–Semiconductor) integrated circuit technology but rather the data movement among processors and memory. The rapidly evolving technology of photonic interconnects promises to deliver this increase in computing capabilities ...
