Exposition to pesticides in pregnant women living at the high valley of Río Negro and Neuquén provinces, the placenta as a biomonitoring tool.

VERA B.; ONDARZA P.M.; GUIÑAZU N.L.

Mendoza

Congreso; XXXIX Reunión Científica Anual de la Sociedad de Biología de Cuyo; 2021

The worldwide use of pesticides has greatly increased in the last 20 years. Pesticides are substances designed to kill, repel, or control plants, insects which impact negatively on agricultural productivity. The spread use of pesticides has favored their detection in environmentalmatrices as air, water and soil, as well as their accumulation in non-target organisms, as human beings. In rural settings, the proximity to areas of intensive pesticide application is a risk factor favoring xenobiotic exposure. It is now recognized that first xenobiotic exposure begins in utero. The High Valley of Río Negro and Neuquén is an important agricultural area which intensively produce apples and pears, among other fruits. Pest control is performed with integrated pest management, the insecticides mostly used are organophosphates ?OP- (chlorpyrifos), carbamates (carbofuran and pirimicarb), and neonicotinoids ?NEO- (thiacloprid and acetamiprid). Pregnant women residing in rural locations (Plottier, Centenario, General Roca, Cipolletti, Cinco Saltos) and in Neuquén city, were included in different study groups from 2008 to the present. Participants were classified as they lived in a rural or urban setting. Matrices analyzed were maternal blood,placenta and umbilical cord blood. Studies were first focused in OP exposure and changes in the classical pesticide exposure biomarkers as acetylcholinesterase, butyrylcholinesterase and carboxylesterases activities were determined. Also the non-classical biomarkers of oxidative stress (glutathione content, antioxidant enzyme activity, genotoxic damage), and hormone levels were also observed in both groups. We demonstrated that the three matrices studied are impacted in the population residing in these rural locations. We confirmed women exposure to current (chlorpyrifos) and historical use insecticides (DDT, lindane, endosulfan). The placenta systems such as the cholinergic, mitochondria bioenergetics, steroidogenic and antioxidant functions were recognized to be important targets of pesticide toxicity in the current environmental exposure scenario. Toxic effects of the different insecticides families OP and NEO were also confirmed in the human trophoblast cell lines of third (JEG-3) and first trimester (HTR-8/SVneo), at representative levels of human environmental exposure.