ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: This study was purposed to determine the levels of PCBs and DDE in adipose tissue and serum and to evaluate the relations with factors affecting these levels. METHODS: We analyzed adipose tissues and sera from 52 gynecologic benign disease patients aged 27-78 years, except hormonal diseases such as breast cancer and endometriosis. We also surveyed age, education, occupation, body mass index (BMI), smoking, drinking, number of children, and duration of breastfeeding by questionnaires. Tissue and serum levels of PCBs and DDE were measured using gas chromatography. RESULTS: The median and geometric mean levels of PCBs were 48. 29 ng/g, 56. 78 ng/g for adipose tissue and 4. 67 uc/L, 4. 85 m/L for serum, and those of DDE were 142.89 ng/g, 117.06 ng/g for adipose tissue and l. 75 m/L, 2.09 ua/L for serum, respectively. Adipose tissue and serum levels for DDE showed high correlation (r=0. 310, p=0. 0002), but those of PCBs didn' t (r=0.029, p=0.2582). In analyses of the differences of the means of log transformed adipose tissue and serum PCBs and DDE levels for groups of potential covariates, only adipose tissue DDE levels were significantly associated with number of children (p=0.015), age at first birth (p=0.014) and BMI (p=0.035). In multiple regression analysis, adipose tissue DDE levels were significantly increased with decreasing number of children and increasing age at first birth. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggested that parity and adiposity were associated with levels of DDE in adipose tissue, and adipose tissue is a better biomarker than serum for evaluating the long-term exposure of organochlorines.
Subject(s)
Child , Female , Humans , Adipose Tissue , Adiposity , Birth Order , Body Mass Index , Breast Feeding , Breast Neoplasms , Chromatography, Gas , Dichlorodiphenyl Dichloroethylene , Drinking , Education , Endometriosis , Occupations , Parity , Polychlorinated Biphenyls , Surveys and Questionnaires , Smoke , SmokingABSTRACT
Recently the changes in medical informatics enabled us to use medical information whenever we want and wherever we are. However, there are few information supporting systems on the web in occupational health field. So we have tried to make an occupational health information system (OHIS) based on the Internet and to provide occupational information to occupational health personnel. There were two steps for developing OHIS. First, we analyzed user's needs and existing information systems and then developed contents of our OHIS. Second, we constructed web server under the environment of Windows user, using operating system of windows NT 4.0 and web browsers of Netscape Navigator. Many users in worksites wanted information through the Internet. The contents of OHS which they wanted were information related to health education of workers, health counselling, news, and so on. The contents of OHIS which we forwarded were occupational health service, information about organization of occupational health, book references and journals, link-sites related to occupational health. In the future, this Interned-based OHIS will be an useful site offering a lot of information to occupational health personnel.