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. 2021 Jun 30;20(1):75.
doi: 10.1186/s12940-021-00760-9.

Dose-response evaluation of urinary cadmium and kidney injury biomarkers in Chinese residents and dietary limit standards

Ying Qing  1 , Jiaqi Yang  1 , Yuanshen Zhu  1 , Yongzhen Li  1 , Weiwei Zheng  2 , Min Wu  1 , Gengsheng He  3
Affiliations

Dose-response evaluation of urinary cadmium and kidney injury biomarkers in Chinese residents and dietary limit standards

Ying Qing et al. Environ Health. .

Abstract

Background: Cadmium (Cd) is a common heavy metal that mainly causes renal damage. There is a lack of research on the large-scale and systematic evaluation of the association between urinary Cd (U-Cd) and various effect biomarkers among Chinese residents.

Methods: Based on the establishment process of dietary Cd limit standards by European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the dose-response relationships between U-Cd and four biomarkers, β2-microglobulin (β2-MG), N-acetyl-β-glucosidase (NAG), microalbumin (mALB), and retinol binding Protein (RBP) were explored, respectively. Toxicokinetic model was used to derive the dietary Cd exposure limit for Chinese residents after critical U-Cd concentration was calculated.

Results: As the sensitive biomarkers of renal injury, β2-MG and NAG were selected to estimate the 95% confidence interval lower limit of the U-Cd benchmark dose (BMDL5) to be 3.07 and 2.98 μg/g Cr, respectively. Dietary Cd exposure limit was calculated to be 0.28 μg/kg bw/day (16.8 μg/day, based on the body weight of 60 kg), which was lower than the average Chinese Cd exposure (30.6 μg/day) by the China National Nutrient and Health Survey.

Conclusion: This study established an overall association between U-Cd and renal injury biomarkers, and explored the Chinese dietary Cd exposure limits, which helps improve Chinese Cd exposure risk assessment and provides a reference basis for formulating reasonable exposure standards.

Keywords: Benchmark dose; Cadmium; Effect biomarkers; Tolerable daily intake; Toxicokinetic model.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declared that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Retrieval and exclusion flow chart of U-Cd and renal injury biomarkers
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
The scatter plot for the U-Cd and renal effect biomarkers (Color represents gender: red (female); blue (male), black (gender information is not clear); shape represents occupational: round (non-occupational), triangle (occupational); dot size represents sample size: size = sqrt (sample size)/158)
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Dose–response relationship between U-Cd and effect biomarkers. (The red solid curve is a fitted dose–response model (Hill or Exponential model). The horizontal line corresponds to a 5% change of the range of the response in the background (BMR = 0.05). The intersections of the horizontal line and the curve is the BMD. The BMDL is illustrated by the dashed-dotted line and represents the lower limit of the 95% confidence interval for BMD.)
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Cumulative population frequency distribution of daily dietary Cd expose considering NAG and β2-MG as biomarkers to calculate U-Cd threshold
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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