Background: Potential associations between background environmental chemical exposures and autoimmunity are understudied.
Objectives: Our exploratory study investigated exposure to individual environmental chemicals and selected mixtures in relation to the presence of antinuclear antibodies (ANA), a widely used biomarker of autoimmunity, in a representative sample of the U.S. population.
Methods: This cross-sectional analysis used data on 4,340 participants from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (1999–2004), of whom 14% were ANA positive, to explore associations between ANA and concentrations of dioxins, dibenzofurans, polychlorinated biphenyls, organochlorines, organophosphates, phenols, metals, and other environmental exposures and metabolites measured in participants’ serum, whole blood, or urine. For dioxin-like compounds with toxic equivalency factors, we developed and applied a new statistical approach to study selected mixtures. Lognormal models and censored-data methods produced estimates of chemical associations with ANA in males, nulliparous females, and parous females; these estimates were adjusted for confounders and accommodated concentrations below detectable levels.
Results: Several associations between chemical concentration and ANA positivity were observed, but only the association in males exposed to triclosan remained statistically significant after correcting for multiple comparisons (mean concentration ratio = 2.8; 95% CI: 1.8, 4.5; p < 0.00001).
Conclusions: These data suggest that background levels of most xenobiotic exposures typical in the U.S. population are not strongly associated with ANA. Future studies should ideally reduce exposure misclassification by including prospective measurement of the chemicals of concern and should track changes in ANA and other autoantibodies over time.
1Biostatistics Center, Social & Scientific Systems, Inc., Durham, North Carolina, USA; 2Departments of Public Health Sciences and Environmental Medicine, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, New York, USA; 3Division of Rheumatology and Immunology, Department of Internal Medicine, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA; 4Epidemiology Branch, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA; 5Department of Clinical Nursing, University of Occupational and Environmental Health, Kitakyushu, Fukuoka, Japan; 6Department of Oral Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA; 7Division of the National Toxicology Program, NIEHS, NIH, DHHS, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA; 8Laboratory of Toxicology and Toxicokinetics, National Cancer Institute, NIH, DHHS, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA; 9Division of Intramural Research, and 10Biostatistics and Computational Biology Branch, NIEHS, NIH, DHHS, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA; 11Environmental Autoimmunity Group, NIEHS, NIH, DHHS, Bethesda, Maryland, USA
Recommended Citation:
Gregg E. Dinse,1 Todd A. Jusko,2 Irene Z. Whitt,et al. Associations Between Selected Xenobiotics and Antinuclear Antibodies in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1999–2004[J]. Environmental Health Perspectives,2016-01-01,Volume 124(Issue 4):426