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DEHP chronic exposure disturbs the gut microbial community and metabolic homeostasis: Gender-based differences in zebrafish
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Chronic exposure of zebrafish to DEHP — a phthalate plasticizer found in many plastic products — from embryo to adulthood disrupted gut microbial communities and metabolic balance, with effects that differed between males and females. This suggests that phthalate exposure from plastic products may alter gut health and metabolism in ways that could be relevant to human health.
Abstract Background: Di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), a predominant phthalate ester (PAE), exhibits various toxic potentials with environmental and human health risks. However, the chronic effects of DEHP exposure on gut microbiota and associated host’s health are still largely unexplored. Here, zebrafish were exposed to relative environmental levels (0-100 μg/L) of DEHP from embryos to adult (3.5 months), then the developmental indexes and microbiota as well as the related energy metabolites in gut tissues were checked to unveil the effects during the growth progress. Results: The results indicated that the composition of gut microbiota was different among male and female adult zebrafish, and DEHP disrupted the diversity and richness of the bacterial community. The histopathological analysis of intestinal tissues revealed the decrease of villus length and tunica muscularis thickness, especially the goblet cells per villi in male fish. Moreover, energy metabolites in gut tissues were actively increased at lower levels groups, which probably contribute to the condition factor of host. For immune-related genes, the expression levels of il-8 was increased both in female and male fish in the lowest concentration (10 μg/L), but the tlr-5 and il-1β genes were in the different response with significantly decreased in female fish. Conclusion: Taken all together, those results indicated that chronic exposure to DEHP led to zebrafish obesity with the disturbed bacterial community in the gut and related metabolism pathways. Those findings provided deep insights on the perturbation of gut microbiota, metabolic homeostasis, and gender-based differences by DEHP exposure.
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Researchers studied how polystyrene nanoplastics and the plasticizer DEHP affect reproduction in male and female zebrafish when exposure occurs individually or together. They found that combined exposure caused gonadal tissue damage and oxidative stress in both sexes, but with strikingly different hormonal responses between males and females. The study suggests that nanoplastics and plastic additives disrupt reproductive endocrine function in sex-specific ways through the hormonal signaling axis.
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