Pesticide Exposure Linked to Increased Risk of Diabetes
WEDNESDAY, Sept. 16, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Exposure to pesticides may increase risk of diabetes, a new analysis suggests. The findings were presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes in Stockholm, Sweden.
The review included 21 observational studies (with a total of nearly 67,000 participants) that investigated a possible link between exposure to pesticides and diabetes. The researchers also conducted a specific analysis that focused solely on type 2 diabetes.
The researchers found exposure to any type of pesticide was associated with a 61 percent increased risk for any type of diabetes. The increased risk for type 2 diabetes was 64 percent. The following chemicals were linked to an increased risk of diabetes, according to the researchers: chlordane, oxychlordane, trans-nonachlor, DDT, DDE, dieldrin, heptachlor, and HCB.
"This systematic review supports the hypothesis that exposure to various types of pesticides increases the risk of diabetes," wrote study authors Giorgos Ntritsos, from the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece, and Ioanna Tzoulaki, Ph.D., and Evangelos Evangelou, Ph.D., from Imperial College London. "Analyzing each pesticide separately suggests that some pesticides are more likely to contribute to the development of diabetes than others."
