In utero exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals, maternal factors and alterations in the epigenetic landscape underlying later-life health effects.

Widespread persistence of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in the environment has mandated the need to study their potential effects on an individual's long-term health after both acute and chronic exposure periods. In this review article a particular focus is given on in utero exposure to EDCs in rodent models which resulted in altered epigenetic programming and transgenerational effects in the offspring causing disrupted reproductive and metabolic phenotypes. The literature to date establishes the impact of transgenerational effects of EDCs potentially associated with epigenetic mediated mechanisms.

In utero exposure to endocrine disruptors and developmental neurotoxicity: Implications for behavioural and neurological disorders in adult life.

Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are a class of environmental toxicants that interfere with the endocrine system, resulting in developmental malformations, reproductive disorders, and alterations to immune and nervous system function. The emergence of screening studies identifying these chemicals in fetal developmental matrices such as maternal blood, placenta and amniotic fluid has steered research focus towards elucidation of in utero effects of exposure to these chemicals, as their capacity to cross the placenta and reach the fetus was established. The presence of EDCs, a majority of which are estrogen mimics, in the fetal environment during early development could potentially affect neurodevelopment, with implications for behavioural and neurological disorders in adult life.

Prenatal bisphenol-A exposure altered exploratory and anxiety-like behaviour and induced non-monotonic, sex-specific changes in the cortical expression of CYP19A1, BDNF and intracellular signaling proteins in F1 rats.

Bisphenol-A (BPA) is one of the extensively studied estrogenic endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDC) with ubiquitous exposure among humans and wildlife. While there are literature reporting the association of dysregulated Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) expression levels with altered cognitive and emotional behaviour such as anxiety-like and stress behaviour in animal models, there are no studies in BPA that investigate these altered neurobehavioural outcomes in parallel with the expression of intracellular proteins involved in BDNF signaling pathway. In this study, pregnant Wistar rats were exposed to BPA through water (25 μg/L, 250 μg/L, and 2.