BPA is suspect in infant asthma

GALVESTON — A chemical used to make everything from plastic water bottles and food packaging to sunglasses and CDs could cause pregnant women’s unborn children to develop asthma, according to University of Texas Medical Branch researchers.

Experiments with mice by a medical branch team found evidence that an expecting mother’s exposure to bisphenol A might increase the odds that the child in her womb will develop the disease.

The investigators found the offspring of female mice exposed to BPA showed significant signs of the disorder, unlike those of mice shielded from the chemical.

For years, scientists have warned of the possible negative health effects of bisphenol A.

Studies have linked its exposure to reproductive disorders, obesity and abnormal brain development, as well as breast and prostate cancers.

In January, the Food and Drug Administration said it was concerned about “the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and young children.”

Team member and associate professor Terumi Midoro-Horiuti said, “We gave BPA in drinking water starting a week before pregnancy, at levels calculated to produce a body concentration that was the same as that in a human mother, and continued on through the pregnancy and lactation periods.”

The researchers then sensitized the mothers’ 4-day-old pups with an allergy-provoking ovalbumin injection, followed by daily respiratory doses of ovalbumin, the main protein in egg white.

Next, they measured levels of antibodies against ovalbumin and quantities of inflammatory white blood cells known as eosinophils in the lungs of the mouse pups.

“All four of our indicators of asthma response showed up in the BPA group, much more so than in the pups of the unexposed mice,” medical branch professor Randall Goldblum said.

The researchers said, although more work is needed to determine the precise mechanism of that response, it almost certainly has its roots in a property of BPA thought to contribute to other health problems — its status as an “environmental estrogen.”

Team members Midoro-Horiuti, Goldblum and medical branch professor Cheryl Watson and postdoctoral fellow Ruby Tiwari have published their findings in a paper titled “Maternal Bisphenol A Exposure Promotes the Development of Experimental Asthma in Mouse Pups” appearing in the February issue of Environmental Health Perspectives.