Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Mar 22;18(1):24.
doi: 10.1186/s12940-019-0464-8.

Urinary mycoestrogens and age and height at menarche in New Jersey girls

Zorimar Rivera-Núñez  1 , Emily S Barrett  2   3 , Elizabeth A Szamreta  4   3 , Sue A Shapses  5 , Bo Qin  4 , Yong Lin  4   3 , Helmut Zarbl  4   2 , Brian Buckley  2   3 , Elisa V Bandera  4   3
Affiliations

Urinary mycoestrogens and age and height at menarche in New Jersey girls

Zorimar Rivera-Núñez et al. Environ Health. .

Abstract

Background: Despite evidence of the endocrine disrupting properties of zearalenone (ZEN) and alpha-zearalanol (zeranol, α-ZAL), they have been minimally studied in human populations. In previous cross-sectional analyses, we demonstrated that 9-10 years old girls with detectable urinary ZEN were of shorter stature and less likely to have reached the onset of breast development than girls with undetectable urinary ZEN. The aim of this study was to examine baseline concentrations of ZEN, (α-ZAL), and their phase-1 metabolites in relation to subsequent growth and timing of menarche using 10 years of longitudinal data.

Methods: Urine samples were collected from participants in the Jersey Girl Study at age 9-10 (n = 163). Unconjugated ZEN, (α-ZAL), and their metabolites were analyzed using high performance liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry. Information on height, weight, and pubertal development was collected at a baseline visit with annual follow-up by mail thereafter. Cox regression was used to evaluate time to menarche in relation to baseline ZEN, (α-ZAL), and total mycoestrogen exposure. Z-scores for height and weight were used in mixed models to assess growth.

Results: Mycoestrogens were detectable in urine in 78.5% of the girls (median ZEN: 1.02 ng/ml, range 0-22.3). Girls with detectable urinary concentrations of (α-ZAL) and total mycoestrogens (sum of ZEN, (α-ZAL) and their metabolites) at baseline were significantly shorter at menarche than girls with levels below detection (p = 0.04). ZEN and total mycoestrogen concentrations were inversely associated with height- and weight-z-scores at menarche (adjusted β = - 0.18, 95% CI: -0.29, - 0.08, and adjusted β = - 0.10, 95% CI: -0.21, 0.01, respectively).

Conclusion: This study supports and extends our previous results suggesting that exposure to ZEN, (α-ZAL), and their metabolites is associated with slower growth and pubertal development in adolescent girls.

Keywords: (α-ZAL); Endocrine disruptors; Mycoestrogens; Puberty; Zearalenone.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Parental consent and girls’ assent were obtained before data collection. This study was approved by the Rutgers Health Sciences Institutional Review Board.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Biro FM, Deardorff J. Identifying opportunities for cancer prevention during preadolescence and adolescence: puberty as a window of susceptibility. J Adolesc Health. 2013;52(5 Suppl):S15–S20. doi: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2012.09.019. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Rudel RA, Fenton SE, Ackerman JM, Euling SY, Makris SL. Environmental exposures and mammary gland development: state of the science, public health implications, and research recommendations. Environ Health Perspect. 2011;119(8):1053–1061. doi: 10.1289/ehp.1002864. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Gore AC, Chappell VA, Fenton SE, Flaws JA, Nadal A, Prins GS, et al. EDC-2: the Endocrine Society's second scientific statement on endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Endocr Rev. 2015;36(6):E1–e150. doi: 10.1210/er.2015-1010. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Nagel SC, vom Saal FS, Welshons WV. The effective free fraction of estradiol and xenoestrogens in human serum measured by whole cell uptake assays: physiology of delivery modifies estrogenic activity. Proc Soc Exp Biol Med. 1998;217(3):300–309. doi: 10.3181/00379727-217-44236. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Zhu CC, Hou YJ, Han J, Cui XS, Kim NH, Sun SC. Zearalenone exposure affects epigenetic modifications of mouse eggs. Mutagenesis. 2014;29(6):489–495. doi: 10.1093/mutage/geu033. - DOI - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources