Exploring the association between non-occupational pesticides exposures and metabolomics biomarkers

BACKGROUND AND AIM: The relationship between pesticide exposures and metabolomics biomarkers is not well understood. We examined the changes in the serum metabolome (early biomarkers) and the metabolic pathways associated with various pesticide exposure scenarios (OPE: overall exposure, PEM: exposure in months, PEY: exposure in years, and PEU: reported specific pesticides use). METHOD: We utilized questionnaire data on pesticide exposures and blood samples for nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based metabolomics analyses from the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 31-year cross-sectional examination. For exposures and metabolites associations, participants size varied between 2361 and 5035. To investigate associations between metabolomics biomarkers and exposure to pesticide scenarios compared to those who reported no exposures multivariable regression analyses stratified for sex and adjustment with covariates (season of pesticide use, socioeconomic position (SEP), alcohol consumption, BMI, and latitude of residence) were performed. Multiple testing by Benjamini–Hochberg false discovery rate (FDR) correction. RESULTS: Pesticide exposures differed by sex, season of pesticide use, alcohol, SEP, latitude of residence. Our results showed that all pesticide exposure scenarios were negatively associated with decreased HDL concentrations across all lipoprotein subclasses in women. OPE, PEY, and PEU were associated with decreased branched-chain amino acid concentrations in men and decreased albumin concentrations in women. OPE, PEY and PEU were also associated with changes in glycolysis metabolites and ketone bodies in both sexes. Specific pesticides exposure was negatively associated with sphingolipids and inflammatory biomarkers in men. In women, OPE, PEM, and PEU were associated with decreased apolipoprotein A1 and increased apolipoprotein B/apolipoprotein A1 ratio. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that identification of early biomarkers of disease risk related to pesticide exposures can inform strategies to reduce exposure and investigate causal pathways. Women may be more susceptible to non-occupational pesticide exposures when compared to men, and future sex-specific studies are warranted.