Written by Corrie Pelc — Fact checked by Jill Seladi-Schulman, Ph.D.
“Type 2 diabetes is a complex disease, and genetics by itself fails to explain it in totality,” Vishal Midya, PhD, MStat, assistant professor of environmental medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told Medical News Today.
“Environmental exposures are one of the few potential suspects that can be directly intervened upon. Therefore, studying ways in which environmental exposures can increase the risk of type 2 diabetes may potentially open new avenues for risk assessment and opportunities for interventions,” he said.
Midya is the corresponding author of a new study recently published in the journal eBioMedicine that found exposure to a class of synthetic chemicals called perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — also known as “forever chemicals” — may also increase a person’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
For this study, researchers analyzed medical data from 53,790 participants in a large electronic health record-linked research database called BioMe. From these records, scientists selected 180 who had recently been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes to compare with them 180 similar participants without the condition.
Using blood samples, researchers measured the amount of PFAS levels in their blood. PFAS chemicals can be found in a variety of everyday products, including:
- Cleaning products
- Firefighting foam
- Food packaging
- Non-stick cookware
- Stain-resistant products
- Waterproof clothing
PFAS chemicals are known as “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down in a landfill. This means PFAs can leach into the soil and water around it, potentially contaminating drinking water and crops grown in soil with high PFAS content.
“There is enough literature (especially animal models) that illustrates the true causal biological effect of PFAS,” Midya said.
“Moreover, PFAS has been linked to type 2 diabetes before, but mostly in vulnerable populations like pregnant [people] or in children and adolescents. Very few works have investigated the detrimental effect of PFAS in a relatively healthy group of adults, and its potential effect even before any disease was clinically diagnosed. This study is one of the first to look into the effect of PFAS in a relatively healthy group of adults from NYC,” he explained.
At the study’s conclusion, Midya and his team found that study participants with higher levels of PFAS in their blood samples were at a much higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the future.
Specifically, researchers found that every increase in PFAS exposure correlated with a 31% increase in type 2 diabetes risk.
“Our study highlights the detrimental effects of PFAS exposure, even four to five years before any diagnosis, and provides some biological insights. It is concerning that PFAS can be detected in this relatively healthy group of adults from NYC.” — Vishal Midya, PhD, MStat
“PFAS, primarily due to their chemical structure, can interfere with how the body stores and regulates fat, and consequently, how the body controls glucose,” he continued. “Higher PFAS levels may disrupt fat and glucose regulation in the body, which in turn may increase the risk of type 2 diabetes.”
As the study is rather based on a small sample, Midya said that it needs to be replicated in larger samples.
“That is why we are currently working on reproducing these results on a much larger and more representative population of NYC,” he said.
“Our findings provide evidence that higher exposures to PFAS could increase risk for type 2 diabetes. Findings from this study underscore the utmost importance of preventing PFAS exposures to promote public health,” he added.
“The government should take steps to educate the general population more about the silent harms that PFAS exposure may cause, and eventually take strides to enact policies that target overall PFAS reduction, starting from food packaging to daily-use products. Our study discusses past PFAS exposures, which we cannot change, but we can certainly take charge of what we are being exposed to today.” — Vishal Midya, PhD, MStat
MNT spoke with Mir Ali, MD, a board certified general surgeon, bariatric surgeon and medical director of MemorialCare Surgical Weight Loss Center at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, CA, about this study.
Ali commented that this was a good study showing how exposure to certain chemicals can adversely affect your health, in this case, increase diabetes risk.
“Diabetes is a growing issue, particularly in more industrialized countries,” he explained. “Though diet and exercise can reduce risk, finding other potential sources of risk, such as environmental exposure, can be another avenue to reduce risk.”
“I would like to see the extent of risk reduction in populations that reduce environmental exposure compared to those that don’t decrease exposure,” he added.
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This article originally appeared here and was republished with permission.
