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Pregnant women exposed to arsenic-contamined water during
pregnancy give birth to children who may develop cancer and other disease,
researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and and Chulabhorn
Research Institute Thailand say.
The study analyzed 32 mothers and their children in an area
of Thailand
who were exposed to heavy arsenic contamination from tin mining. Specialists
say that is not the only place who is highly contamined with arsenic. The
Southwest in the United
States seem to have the same problem.
Researchers analyzed the blood from the umbilical cords at
birth. The results were worrisome. They found about 450 genes that could become
significantly more active (in most cases) or less active than the same genes in
unexposed children.
They also isolated 11 of those genes which were the most
active and associated with inflammation, which can lead to an increased risk of
cancer later in life, revealed the findings.
"The function of those 11 genes is involved in cellular
stress responses particularly inflammatory responses," said one of authors
Leona D. Samson, who is also the director of MIT's Center for Environmental
Health Sciences or CHES. Mathuros Richirawat from Chulabhorn and Rebecca C Fry
of CHES were among the participants at the study.
"We know that chronic inflammation at least in adults
can predispose them to cancer. We don't now that in the case of these babies
obviously, but there is a possibility," she said.
Samson said it is unclear how the arsenic found its way to
the babies. "Either it's a response of the mother transmitted to baby
inutero or arsenic getting across the placenta. Clearly, something has changed
in the babies," she said.
The findings were reported in the November 23 issue of the
journal PLoS genetics published by the Public Library of Science in San Francisco
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