Circulating levels of persistent organic pollutants in relation to visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissue by abdominal MRI

Abstract

We and others have shown relationships between circulating levels of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and different measures of obesity in both cross-sectional and prospective studies. Since viscerally located fat seems to be the most harmful type, we investigated whether plasma POP levels were more closely related to visceral adipose tissue (VAT) than to subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT). Thousand hundred and sixteen subjects aged 70 years were investigated in the Prospective Investigation of the Vasculature in Uppsala Seniors (PIVUS) study; 23 POPs were analyzed using high-resolution gas chromatography/high-resolution mass spectrometry. Abdominal magnetic resonance imaging, measuring VAT and SAT, respectively, was performed in a representative subsample of 287 subjects. The less chlorinated polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) congeners (105 and 118), and the pesticides dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE), hexachlorobenzene (HCB), and trans-nonachlordane (TNC) were positively related to both VAT and SAT, whereas the more highly chlorinated PCBs (153, 156, 157, 169, 170, 180, 194, 206, and 209) were inversely related to both VAT and SAT. PCB189 was related to the VAT/SAT ratio in an inverted U-shaped manner (P = 0.0008). In conclusion, the results were in accordance with our previous studies using waist circumference and fat mass as obesity measure. However, the novel finding that PCB189 was related to the VAT/SAT ratio deserves further investigation since exposure to this PCB congener, which has previously been linked to diabetes development, might thereby play a role in the distribution of abdominal adipose tissue.