Acetaminophen and Phthalates: Anti-androgenic Action and Altered Development

April Griffus at Creative Commons

Acetaminophen (known as paracetamol in Europe and sold as Tylenol in the United States, Canada and Japan, and as Panadol in South America) is widely used as an analgesic and antipyretic. A recent study found that 56 percent of pregnant women in the USA used acetaminophen (acetyl-para-aminophenol, APAP) during their first trimester. APAP has been shown in animal and human studies to share endocrine disrupting properties (particularly anti-androgenic action) with some phthalates.  Multiple human and rodent studies report a range of adverse outcomes following prenatal analgesic and phthalate exposures but none has looked at concurrent exposure to both. 

On this call, Dr. Shanna Swan described her recent work, together with Carl Gustaf Bornehag, PI of the large Swedish cohort (SELMA), on first trimester exposure to APAP and phthalates in relation to language development at 30 months of age in two pregnancy cohorts.

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Dr. Shanna H Swan is a professor of Environmental Medicine & Public Health and a professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science at Mount Sinai. Dr. Swan has worked for over twenty-five years to understand the threats posed by chemicals to our environment. Of most concern to Dr. Swan are the chemicals that our bodies can confuse with its own hormones (the “endocrine disrupting” chemicals) and their sexually dimorphic effects on development. At the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Dept of Environmental Medicine and Public Health, Dr. Swan is working with a wide range of collaborators, including epidemiologists, psychologists, biostatisticians, geneticists and systems biologists to conduct studies and develop methods to evaluate the risks from such chemicals. In The Infant Development and the Environment Study (TIDES), Dr Swan and colleagues have been following 800 mothers since early pregnancy and their children (now 4-5 years of age). In TIDES, which is now part of the larger national ECHO study, they are looking at reproductive, neurodevelopmental, pulmonary, and cardiovascular outcomes in relation to prenatal and childhood exposures as TIDES children grow. A list of her publications can be found on the Mount Sinai website.

This teleconference call is one in a monthly series sponsored by the Collaborative on Health and the Environment’s TEDX), Sharyle Patton (Commonweal), and Genon Jensen (HEAL). To see a full list of past calls related to EDCs and listen to the MP3 recordings please visit the CHE EDC Strategies Partnership page.

The call was moderated by Carol Kwiatkowski, PhD, executive director of TEDX. The call lasted 30 min and was recorded.