Analysis of Postdeployment Serum Samples Identifies Potential Biomarkers of Exposure to Burn Pits and Other Environmental Hazards.

Thomas H Thatcher Collynn F Woeller Juilee Thakar Atif Khan Philip K Hopke Matthew Ryan Smith Karan Uppal Douglas I Walker Young-Mi Go Dean P Jones Pamela L Krahl Timothy M Mallon Patricia J Sime Richard P Phipps Mark J Utell

J Occup Environ Med

Department of Medicine, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, New York (Dr Thatcher, Dr Sime, Dr Phipps, and Dr Utell); Department of Environmental Medicine, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, New York (Dr Woeller, Dr Sime, Dr Phipps, and Dr Utell); Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, New York (Dr Thakar, Dr Khan, Dr Sime, and Dr Phipps); Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, New York (Dr Thakar and Dr Khan); Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, New York (Dr Hopke); Center for Air Resources Engineering and Science, Clarkson University, Potsdam, New York (Dr Hopke); Clinical Biomarkers Laboratory, Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Department of Medicine, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia (Dr Smith, Dr Uppal, Dr Walker, Dr Go, and Dr Jones); Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York (Dr Walker); Department of Preventive Medicine and Biostatistics, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland (Dr Krahl and Dr Mallon); Department of Internal Medicine, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia (Dr Thatcher and Dr Sime).

Published: December 2019

Objective: The potential health risks of deployment to sites with open burn pits remain poorly understood, in part, because personal exposure monitoring was not performed. Here, we investigated whether postdeployment serum samples contain biomarkers associated with exposure to burn pits.

Methods: A total of 237 biomarkers were measured in 800 serum samples from deployed and never-deployed subjects. We used a regression model and a supervised vector machine to identify serum biomarkers with significant associations with exposures and deployment.

Results: We identified 101 serum biomarkers associated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, dioxins or furans, and 54 biomarkers associated with deployment. Twenty-six of these biomarkers were shared in common by the exposure and deployment groups.

Conclusions: We identify a potential signature of exposure to open burn pits, and provide a framework for using postexposure sera to identify exposures when contemporaneous monitoring was inadequate.

Download full-text PDF	Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6901100	PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/JOM.0000000000001715	DOI Listing

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