EDITORIAL

Transgenerational inheritance of environmental obesogens

Miquel Porta¹, Duk-Hee Lee², Elisa Puigdomènech¹

¹ Institut Municipal d’Investigació Mèdica (IMIM), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, CIBERESP, Spain
² Department of Preventive Medicine and Health Promotion Research Center, School of Medicine, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Korea

Correspondence to:
Professor Miquel Porta, Clinical and Molecular Epidemiology of Cancer Unit, Institut Municipal d’Investigació Mèdica (IMIM), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Carrer del Dr. Aiguader 88, E-08003 Barcelona, Spain; mporta@imim.es

Accepted 13 November 2008

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Nowadays, dichlorodiphenyl-dichloroethylene (DDE), the main degradation product of the pesticide dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane (DDT), is detected in all adults and in nearly all newborns in most countries worldwide.^1–4 Thus, even a small increase in the risk of obesity that DDE might confer on offspring would have important implications.^{5 6} This is the main finding that Karmaus et al (see page 143) report in this issue: the weight and BMI of offspring in adulthood were significantly related to the extrapolated prenatal DDE levels of their mothers.⁷ Specifically, compared to maternal DDE levels below 1.5 µg/l, the authors observed an increase in offspring BMI of 1.65 when prenatal DDE was 1.5–2.9 µg/l, and an increase of 2.88 if DDE was greater than 2.9 µg/l. These concentrations of DDE are common worldwide; in cord blood, amniotic fluid and serum of pregnant women, DDE is often in the range 0.6–1.9 µg/l or 15–500 ng/g.^{1 4 8 9}

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Relevant Article

Maternal levels of dichlorodiphenyl-dichloroethylene (DDE) may increase weight and body mass index in adult female offspring

W Karmaus, J R Osuch, I Eneli, L M Mudd, J Zhang, D Mikucki, P Haan, S Davis
Occup. Environ. Med. 2009 66: 143-149. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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