Could Pesticide Exposure Increase Risk of Diabetes?
Exposure to pesticides increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by over 60%, according to the results of a recent literature review.
“Emerging evidence suggests that environmental contaminants, including pesticides play an important role in the pathogenesis of diabetes. We performed a systematic review of observational studies that assessed the association between exposure to pesticides and diabetes,” researchers wrote.
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For their research, investigators conducted a literature review of 21 studies involving 66,714 participants on the relationship between pesticide exposure and any health outcomes, separating studies that recruited only patients with type 2 diabetes.
Overall, the odds ratio for the association of exposure to any type of pesticide and diabetes was 1.61. When researched examined data from just the 12 studies evaluating patients with type 2 diabetes, they found a similar odds ratio of 1.64.
When broken down by the type of pesticide, the effects ranged from an odds ratio of 1.19 with exposure to chlordane to an odds ratio of 2.34 with exposure to trans-nonanchlor.
“This systematic review supports the hypothesis that exposure to various types of pesticides increases the risk of diabetes,” they concluded.
“Analysing each pesticide separately reduces heterogeneity and the different effect sizes suggest that some pesticides are more likely to contribute to the development of diabetes than others.”
—Michael Potts
Reference:
Ntritsos G, Kavvoura FK, Chondrogiorgi M, et al. Association between diabetes and exposure to pesticides: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Paper presented at: 51st Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes. September 15, 2015. Stockholm, Sweden.