Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 18|pp 18099—18126

Early-life exposure to bisphenol A and reproductive-related outcomes in rodent models: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Xiaohan Ren¹, Tongtong Zhang¹, Xinglin Chen¹, Xiyi Wei¹, Ye Tian¹, Guangyao Li¹, Xu Zhang¹, Wei Zhang¹, Zebing You¹, Shangqian Wang¹, Chao Qin¹

¹The State Key Laboratory of Reproductive Medicine, Department of Urology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing 210029, China

* Equal contribution

Received: March 3, 2020Accepted: June 18, 2020Published: September 30, 2020

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103620

Copyright: © 2020 Ren et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

We performed this meta-analysis to elucidate the associations between early-life BPA exposure and reproductive-related outcome indicators. The standardized mean differences (SMDs) and its 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were measured by fixed-effects or random-effects models. The results revealed that BPA exposure at extremely-high dose (>50mg/kg/day) was significantly associated with negative reproductive-related outcomes (Prostate weight: SMD: -4.21; 95% Cl: -5.97, -2.44; Testis weight: SMD: -1.92; 95% Cl: -2.61, -1.23; Epididymis weight: SMD: -2.16; 95% Cl: -3.47, -0.86; Daily sperm production; SMD: -1.90; 95% Cl: -3.27, -0.53; Epididymal sperm count; SMD: -3.42; 95% Cl: -3.87, -2.97). Meanwhile, regardless of the dose, early-life BPA exposure could result in an adverse effect on sperm parameters of F1 generation male rodents at any period. Also, we found the non-monotonic dose response curves of BPA in specific tissues or organs, which may challenge the traditional mindset of "safe dose". This study demonstrated that bisphenol A exposure was relevant to adverse reproductive-related outcomes at specially appointed dose and period of life. Yet the assumption that no adverse effects can occur below the "safe" dose is suspected.