Washington, June 28 (ANI): A study has found that male deer mice exposed to the controversial chemical BPA become demasculinized and behave more like females in their spatial navigational abilities.
The US Food and Drug Administration notes "some concern" with the controversial chemical BPA, and many other countries, such as Japan and Canada, have considered BPA product bans.
But disagreement exists amongst scientists in this field on the effects of BPA in animals and humans.
The latest research from the University of Missouri has led scientists to conclude that exposure to BPA during human development could be damaging to behavioural and cognitive traits that are unique to each sex and important in reproduction.
"The BPA-exposed deer mice in our study look normal; there is nothing obviously wrong with them. Yet, they are clearly different," Cheryl Rosenfeld, associate professor in biomedical sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine and investigator in the Bond Life Sciences Center, said.
"Females do not want to mate with BPA-exposed male deer mice, and BPA-exposed males perform worse on spatial navigation tasks that assess their ability to find female partners in the wild.
"This study sets the stage for BPA researchers to examine how BPA might differentially impact the behavioural and cognitive patterns of boys versus girls.
"Investigators looking for obvious BPA-induced differences, such as chromosome deletions or DNA mutations, could be missing subtle behavioural differences that eventually lead to long-term adverse outcomes, including demasculinization of male behaviours with ensuing decreased reproductive fitness," she said.
Male deer mice exposed to BPA were less desirable to female deer mice. Females primed to breed were tested in a so-called mate choice experiment.
The females' level of interest in a stranger male was measured by observing specific preferential behaviours, such as nose-to-nose sniffing and the amount of time the female spent evaluating her potential partner.
These behaviours assess a potential mate's genetic fitness. Rosenfeld said that both non-exposed and BPA-exposed females favoured control males over BPA-exposed males on a two-to-one basis.
"These findings presumably have broad implications to other species, including humans, where there are also innate differences between males and females in cognitive and behavioural patterns," Rosenfeld said.
"In the wide scheme of things, these behavioural deficits could, in the long term, undermine the ability of a species such as the deer mouse to reproduce in the wild.
"Whether there are comparable health threats to humans remains unclear, but there clearly must be a concern," she added.
The research will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (ANI)
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