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Published on: October 22, 2014
Systemic inflammation moderate the association between urinary polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon metabolites and
Jing Liu1, Ziwei Zhou2, Xu Zhu3
1Department of Cardiology, Shaanxi Provincial People's Hospital, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710000, China.
Background:
This study aims to investigate the mediation effects of the systemic inflammation on the association between urinary polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) metabolites and hypertension in general US population.
Methods:
This cross-sectional study analyzed 9 urinary PAHs metabolites from the 2003-2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Quantile g-computation (QG-C) were applied to assess the association between PAHs mixture exposure and hypertension prevalence. The associations among PAHs (exposure), hypertension (outcome), and inflammatory markers (C-reactive protein, alkaline phosphatase, white blood cell count, neutrophil count, and monocyte count; mediators) were investigated using mediation analysis.
Results:
Among the 6846 participants, 2473 (36.1%) were diagnosed with hypertension. The mean of systolic and diastolic BP were 138.6 (20.4) and 72.7 (16.0) mmHg in the hypertensive group, and 115.8 (10.9) mmHg and 69.0 (10.0) mmHg in the non-hypertensive group. The mixture of urinary PAHs metabolites was significantly associated with increased prevalence of hypertension, with β = 0.124 (95% CI: 0.04, 0.20) for every quantile increase. Urinary 1-PHE (36.48%), 2-FLU (27.64%) and 1-PYR (26.64%) had the greatest positive contribution to the overall effect. Mediation analysis revealed that inflammatory markers play a mediating role in the associations between PAHs metabolites (2-FLU, 3-PHE, 1-PHE, 2-PHE, 1-PYR, and 9-FLU) and hypertensive adults.
Conclusions:
Our study demonstrated that mixture exposure to PAHs is associated with the prevalence of hypertension in US adult population, which might be primarily driven by 1-PHE, 2-FLU and 1-PYR. Furthermore, we have observed that systemic inflammation plays a significant mediating role in this associations.
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