Exposure to acrylamide and reduced heart rate variability: The mediating role of transforming growth factor-β

Abstract

The potential adverse health effects of acrylamide have drawn worldwide attention and the World Health Organization has urged further urgent studies on its health threat. Herein we explored the exposure-response relationship and underlying mechanism between internal acrylamide exposure and heart rate variability (HRV) alteration, a marker of cardiac autonomic dysfunction. We measured six HRV indices and two urinary acrylamide metabolites (N-Acetyl-S-(2-carbamoylethyl)-l-cysteine, AAMA; N-Acetyl-S-(2-carbamoyl-2-hydroxyethyl)-l-cysteine, GAMA) for 2997 general Chinese adults from the Wuhan-Zhuhai cohort, of whom 2414 had data on plasma transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1). The associations among urinary acrylamide metabolites, HRV and TGF-β1 were evaluated by linear mixed models and restricted cubic spline models. The mediating role of TGF-β1 was investigated by conducting mediation analysis. We found significantly negative dose-response relationships of all urinary acrylamide metabolites and TGF-β1 with all six HRV indices after adjusting for potential confounders (all P < 0.05). Urinary GAMA (β=0.074, P < 0.05) rather than AAMA (β=0.024, P > 0.05) was positively and dose-dependently associated with TGF-β1, which in turn significantly mediated 5.71–7.41 % of the GAMA-associated HRV reduction. Our findings suggest for the first time that daily exposure of general population to acrylamide is associated with cardiac autonomic dysfunction, where a mechanism involving TGF-β pathway may be involved.