title: Environmental pollutants and dysregulation of male puberty--a comparison among species.
abstract: The scientific literature on altered onset of puberty predominantly involves studies on females. This paper reviews current knowledge on the role of environmental pollutants in dysregulation of male puberty in humans, laboratory rodents and farm animals. The methods used to determine the onset of puberty are well developed in humans and farm animals, and standardized across studies in humans. In laboratory rodents standardized external morphological endpoints are used. There is an increasing weight of evidence from epidemiological studies in humans, as well as from experiments in animals, indicating that environmental pollutants dysregulate puberty in males. Most data are from studies on "classical" persistent environmental pollutants. Assessing the effect of multichemical environmental pollution on dysregulation of puberty in humans is more challenging; further solid epidemiological data would likely contribute most to our understanding, especially if combined with systematically collected field-data from selected wildlife.
authors.affiliation: Division of Reproduction, Department of Clinical Sciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, P.O. Box 7054, SE-750 07 Uppsala, Sweden. Electronic address: ulf.magnusson@slu.se.
authors.forename: Ulf
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Magnusson
authors.affiliation: Swedish Medical Products Agency, P.O. Box 26, SE-751 03 Uppsala, Sweden. Electronic address: karl.ljungvall@mpa.se.
authors.forename: Karl
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ljungvall
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004781:Environmental Exposure / Q000009:adverse effects*; D004785:Environmental Pollutants / Q000633:toxicity*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011627:Puberty / Q000187:drug effects*; D013045:Species Specificity
chemical_list: D004785:Environmental Pollutants
keywords: Chemicals; Environmental pollution; Farm animal; Human; Male puberty; Rodent; Wildlife