EXETER, ENGLAND (Aug. 16, 12:15 p.m. ET) — A research team from the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry (PCMD), University of Exeter and University of Cambridge has published a report linking bisphenol A (BPA) with heart disease.
The study, published in online journal PloS One, looked at 591 patients and compared their urinary levels of BPA with the occurrence of severe coronary artery stenosis. According to the researchers, there was a correlation.
“In our relatively small sample of patients investigated for ischemic heart disease referred for coronary angiography, BPA exposure (evident in urinary BPA concentrations) was higher in those with severe coronary artery stenoses compared to those with no vessel disease,” conclude the report's authors.”
“Larger studies are needed to estimate true dose response relationships. The mechanisms underlying the association remain to be established.”
Team leader David Melzer, professor of epidemiology and public health at PCMD, University of Exeter, said: “Our latest study strengthens a growing body of work that suggests that BPA may be adding to known risk factors for heart disease.
“Full proof will be very difficult to get, as experiments on this in humans are not feasible.”
Steve Hengtes, director of the Polycarbonate/BPA Global Group at the American Chemistry Council, said the study has “limited value.”
“This is a ‘cross-sectional' study design in which the BPA measurement was made at the same time as the heart disease diagnosis. A single measurement of BPA, at the same time when heart disease was diagnosed, only is indicative of very recent exposure and tells nothing about exposure many years earlier in the critical time period when heart disease was developing,” he said.
“It's only a statistical association [between the single BPA measurement and the incidence of heart disease], with no apparent biological meaning. The statistical association, expressed as an ‘odd ratio,' was small and of weak statistical significance.”
Anthony Clark from PRW contributed to this report.
