BUIES CREEK, North Carolina – Kassim Traore, professor and chair of biochemistry and genetics, was recently published in the March 2016 issue of Reproductive Toxicology.
Dr. Traore has been investigating the effects of environmental toxicants on the male reproductive system for eleven years and the publication details his current research titled “Repeated Exposures of the Male Sprague Dawley Rat Reproductive Tract to Environmental Toxicants: Do Earlier Exposures to Di-(2-Ethylhexyl) Phthalate (DEHP) Alter the Effects of Later Exposures?”
The research was in collaboration with Daniel B. Martinez-Arguelles and Vasilios Papadopoulos of McGill University and Haolin Chen and Barry R. Zirkin of Johns Hopkins University. The research is supported by NIH, CIHR, and Canada Research Chair in Biomedical Pharmacology grants.
The research findings indicate “early stresses associated with exposure to environmental toxicants, particularly those experienced in the womb, lead to vulnerabilities later in life.”
“This research is important because today we are exposed to thousands of environmental chemicals,” said Dr. Traore. “In our research, we mimic the natural exposure patterns of when the child is in the womb and during childhood – the states when we are most vulnerable to effects of toxicants.”
“Although exposures to environmental toxicants occur throughout life, little attention has been paid to the possible effects of exposures early in life on later exposure effects,” said Dr. Traore. “Our goal is for this research to lead to a paradigm shift in how we study environmental toxicants – most studies look at either youth or womb exposure, but our findings indicate it is important to look at look at both together.”