Impact/Purpose:

1. Increase the precision of our prior estimates of exposure to current-use pesticides and compare these in agricultural (IA and MO) and urban (MN) areas;
2. Estimate the strength of the associations between biomarkers of current-use pesticides and semen parameters across study centers, as well as within center;
3. Examine correlation between the man’s and the woman’s biomarker levels of current-use pesticides as well as geographical clustering of exposure levels;


4. Examine simultaneous exposure to multiple pesticides and semen quality and compare the fit of additive, sub-additive and super-additive models to these data;


5. Measure associations between urinary and serum biomarkers of current-use pesticides;


6. Measure levels of human sperm membrane progesterone receptor (hmPRα) in relation to both semen parameters and levels of current-use pesticides.

Description:

We recently reported that higher levels of urinary metabolite (mercapturates) of the current-use pesticides alachlor, atrazine and diazinon were significantly associated with decreased semen quality in fertile men from mid-Missouri. The primary goal of this study is to strengthen or refute these findings by increasing our sample size and adding data from a second agricultural area (Iowa City, IA). Secondarily, the adequacy of these metabolites for exposure assessment will be examined, as will route of exposure and one possible mechanism of pesticide action on semen.

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Project Information:

Subjects for the proposed study are fertile men and their partners who participated in the Study for Future Families (SFF), a multi-center pregnancy cohort study conducted under funding from the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and a STAR grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). Protocols (http://www.missouri.edu/~SFF/ (Logon: SFF; Password: family1) have been kept constant across centers and over time. Urinary pesticide levels in 150 new recruits from IA will be examined together with results from men previously recruited in MO (N=107) and MN (N=126) to estimate associations between pesticide levels and semen quality. We will compare urine and serum pesticide levels and pesticide levels within the couple and geographical clustering of pesticide levels. We also propose to measure levels of human sperm membrane progesterone receptor (hmPRα) in relation to semen quality and pesticides in smaller samples.

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