Dietary Exposure to Pesticide and Veterinary Drug Residues and Their Effects on Human Fertility and Embryo Development: A Global Overview.

Drug residues that contaminate food and water represent a serious concern for human health. The major concerns regard the possible irrational use of these contaminants, since this might increase the amplitude of exposure. Multiple sources contribute to the overall exposure to contaminants, including agriculture, domestic use, personal, public and veterinary healthcare, increasing the possible origin of contamination. In this review, we focus on crop pesticides and veterinary drug residues because of their extensive use in modern agriculture and farming, which ensures food production and security for the ever-growing population around the world. We discuss crop pesticides and veterinary drug residues with respect to their worldwide distribution and impacts, with special attention on their harmful effects on human reproduction and embryo development, as well as their link to epigenetic alterations, leading to intergenerational and transgenerational diseases. Among the contaminants, the most commonly implicated in causing such disorders are organophosphates, glyphosate and antibiotics, with tetracyclines being the most frequently reported. This review highlights the importance of finding new management strategies for pesticides and veterinary drugs. Moreover, due to the still limited knowledge on inter- and transgenerational effects of these contaminants, we underlie the need to strengthen research in this field, so as to better clarify the specific effects of each contaminant and their long-term impact.

Prenatal exposure to CB2 receptors agonist differentially impacts male and female germ cells via histone modification.

Cannabis use during pregnancy is increasing in the last few years potentially because of decreased perception of the risk of harm. Regardless, recent evidence demonstrated that prenatal cannabis exposure is associated with adverse outcomes. To date there is limited evidence of the impact of cannabis exposure during pregnancy on the reproductive health of the offspring. The biological effects of cannabis are mediated by two cannabinoid receptors, CB1 and CB2. We previously demonstrated that CB2 is highly expressed in mouse male and female fetal germ cells. In this study, we investigated the effects of prenatal exposure to a selective CB2 agonist, JWH-133, on the long-term reproductive health of male and female offspring and on the involved molecular epigenetic mechanisms. Notably, we focused on epigenetic histone modifications that can silence or activate gene expression, playing a pivotal role in cell differentiation. We reported that prenatal activation of CB2 has a sex-specific impact on germ cell development of the offspring. In male it determines a delay of germ cell differentiation coinciding with an enrichment of H3K27me3, while in female it causes a reduction of the follicles number through an increased apoptotic process not linked to modified H3K27me3 level.