musk and Breast-Neoplasms

We determined the concentrations of 98 halogenated organic compounds and synthetic musks in breast fat tissues of 50 breast cancer patients (age range: 34-77 years) collected during 1996-1998 in Ulster County, New York, USA. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), organochlorine pesticides (OCPs), polybrominated biphenyl 153 (PBB-153), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), and synthetic musk compounds (SMCs) were analyzed in breast fat tissues, and 46 analytes were found at a detection frequency of ≥ 65% and at concentrations in the decreasing order of OCPs > PCBs > SMCs > PBDEs > PBB-153. PCBs (median: 323 ng/g wet wt) and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethanes (DDTs, median: 293 ng/g wet wt) were the major compounds found in breast fat tissues. Among PCB congeners, hexa- and hepta-chlorobiphenyls (60% of total PCBs) were the abundant ones. p,p'-DDE accounted for more than 99% of the total DDT concentrations. The concentrations of SMCs and PBDEs were 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than those of PCBs and DDTs. 1,3,4,6,7,8-Hexahydro-4,6,6,7,8,8-hexamethylcyclopenta-r-2-benzopyran (median: 33 ng/g wet wt) was the most abundant SMC, whereas BDE-47 (median: 4.5 ng/g wet wt) was the most dominant PBDE congener present in breast tissues. A significant correlation (p < 0.05) between women's age and concentrations of DDTs, chlordanes, hexachlorobenzene and PCBs in breast tissues was found. Concentrations of PCBs, PBDEs, OCPs, and SMCs were not significantly different between malignant and benign tumor cases. This study adds baseline information on target tissue burdens of persistent organic contaminants in breast cancer patients.

Topics: Adipose Tissue; Adult; Aged; Body Burden; Breast; Breast Neoplasms; Environmental Pollutants; Fatty Acids, Monounsaturated; Female; Humans; Hydrocarbons, Halogenated; Middle Aged

This paper presents a novel discriminant analysis (DA) for feature extraction using mutual information (MI) and Fisher discriminant analysis (MI-FDA). Most DA algorithms for feature extraction are based on a transformation which maximizes the between-class scatter and minimizes the within-class scatter. In contrast, the proposed method uses the Fisher's criterion to find a transformation that maximizes the MI between the transferred features and the target classes and minimizes the redundancy. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated using UCI databases and compared with the performance of some DA-based algorithms. The results indicate that MI-FDA provides a robust performance over different data sets with different characteristics. On average, an accuracy rate of 81.3% was achieved using MI-FDA.

Topics: Algorithms; Breast Neoplasms; Databases, Factual; Diagnostic Techniques and Procedures; Discriminant Analysis; Ethnicity; Fatty Acids, Monounsaturated; Female; Heart; Humans; Lung Neoplasms; Parkinson Disease; Pattern Recognition, Automated; Survival Analysis; Tomography, Emission-Computed, Single-Photon; Young Adult

The widespread use of synthetic musk fragrances and the resultant presence of these substances and their metabolites in the aquatic environment (as well as their accumulation in human adipose tissue) raises the question of whether musk fragrances display endocrine and in particular estrogenic activity. A variety of musk fragrances were tested using the E-screen assay. A statistically significant increase in proliferation rate of human MCF-7 breast cancer cells was detected for two nitro musks (musk xylene, musk ketone), a major metabolite of musk xylene ( p-amino-musk xylene), and the polycyclic musk fragrance AHTN. This indicates that these substances do, in fact, demonstrate estrogenic activity. Coincubation with the antiestrogen tamoxifen showed that the increase in proliferation rate by the musk fragrances is estrogen receptor-mediated. It must be noted, however, that the effective estrogenic strength and estrogenic potency were low compared to 17 b-estradiol. The naturally occurring fragrance muscone from the group of macrocyclic musk fragrances, a group of substances that have not yet been well characterized in respect to their toxicological properties, has also been shown to be weakly estrogenically active in vitro. E-screen analysis showed that the nitro musk metabolites o-amino musk xylene and 2-amino-MK, the macrocyclic musk fragrances ethylene brassylate, ethylene dodecandioate, and cyclopentadecanolide, are not estrogenically active.

Topics: Biological Assay; Breast Neoplasms; Cell Division; Cycloparaffins; Estrogens; Fatty Acids, Monounsaturated; Female; Humans; Odorants; Receptors, Estrogen; Tumor Cells, Cultured