ArticleHepatology (Baltimore, Md.)2021
In Utero Exposure to Mercury Is Associated With Increased Susceptibility to Liver Injury and Inflammation in Childhood.
Article in Hepatology (Baltimore, Md.), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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15 citing papers in PubMed, 40 citations in OpenAlex.
- Assessing environmental exposures in children: toward a comprehensive exposome approach.Pediatric research · 2026Review
- Impact of metabolism-disrupting chemicals and folic acid supplementation on liver injury and steatosis in mother-child pairs.Journal of hepatology · 2025Article
- Association between heavy metal exposure and biomarkers for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in Korean adolescents.Heliyon · 2024Article
- Integrating Multi-Omics with environmental data for precision health: A novel analytic framework and case study on prenatal mercury induced childhood fatty liver disease.Environment international · 2024Article
- In utero exposure to antihistamines and risk of hepatocellular carcinoma in a multigenerational cohort.Hepatology communications · 2024Article
- The contribution of the exposome to the burden of cardiovascular disease.Nature reviews. Cardiology · 2023Review
- Sex, Nutrition, and NAFLD: Relevance of Environmental Pollution.Nutrients · 2023Review
- Inflammation and the Potential Implication of Macrophage-Microglia Polarization in Human ASD: An Overview.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Review
- Prospective association between phthalate exposure in childhood and liver function in adolescence: the Ewha Birth and Growth Cohort Study.Environmental health : a global access science source · 2023Article
- Associations of metal mixtures with metabolic-associated fatty liver disease and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease: NHANES 2003-2018.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Systemic maternal inflammation promotes ASD via IL-6 and IFN-γ.Bioscience reports · 2022Review
- Association of blood manganese, selenium with steatosis, fibrosis in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2017-18.Environmental research · 2022Article
- GOS Ameliorates Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Induced by High Fat and High Sugar Diet through Lipid Metabolism and Intestinal Microbes.Nutrients · 2022Article
- Association of Prenatal Exposure to Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals With Liver Injury in Children.JAMA network open · 2022Article
- Fasting Plasma Glucose Mediates the Prospective Effect of Maternal Metal Level on Birth Outcomes: A Retrospective and Longitudinal Population-Based Cohort Study.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2021Article
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34 authors at 12 institutions in 7 countries.
Funding
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
aimsNonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most prevalent cause of liver disease in children. Mercury (Hg), a ubiquitous toxic metal, has been proposed as an environmental factor contributing to toxicant-associated fatty liver disease. APPROACH AND
resultsWe investigated the effect of prenatal exposure to Hg on childhood liver injury by combining epidemiological results from a multicenter mother-child cohort with complementary in vitro experiments on monocyte cells that are known to play a key role in liver immune homeostasis and NAFLD. We used data from 872 mothers and their children (median age, 8.1 years; interquartile range [IQR], 6.5-8.7) from the European Human Early-Life Exposome cohort. We measured Hg concentration in maternal blood during pregnancy (median, 2.0 μg/L; IQR, 1.1-3.6). We also assessed serum levels of alanine aminotransferase (ALT), a common screening tool for pediatric NAFLD, and plasma concentrations of inflammation-related cytokines in children. We found that prenatal Hg exposure was associated with a phenotype in children that was characterized by elevated ALT (≥22.1 U/L for females and ≥25.8 U/L for males) and increased concentrations of circulating IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8, and TNF-α. Consistently, inflammatory monocytes exposed in vitro to a physiologically relevant dose of Hg demonstrated significant up-regulation of genes encoding these four cytokines and increased concentrations of IL-8 and TNF-α in the supernatants.
conclusionsThese findings suggest that developmental exposure to Hg can contribute to inflammation and increased NAFLD risk in early life.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.