Cholinesterase homozygous genotype as susceptible biomarker of hypertriglyceridaemia for pesticide-exposed agricultural workers

Abstract

Purpose

Dyslipidemia is an emerging metabolic disorder among pesticide-exposed agricultural workers, and this study was aimed to explore biomarkers of hypertriglyceridaemia susceptibility.

Methods

This cross-sectional study recruited 72 pesticide-exposed subjects and 78 non-exposed controls. Lipid profile, cholinesterase activity, and thyroid hormones were analysed with routine assays. Six loci, including rs11206244 and rs2235544 for deiodinase 1, rs12885300 and rs225014 for deiodinase 2, rs1803274 for butyrylcholinesterase, and rs3757869 for acetylcholinesterase were genotyped using an improved multiplex ligation detection reaction technique.

Results

Pesticide-exposed subjects showed higher levels of triglyceride than controls (p = 0.009), although there were comparable cholinesterase activity and genotype frequencies of all six loci between pesticide-exposed subjects and controls. Pesticide-exposed subjects with homozygous genotype of cholinesterase had increased triglyceride levels than controls (p < 0.05). The percentage of hypertriglyceridaemia was 28.6% and 8.8% for pesticide-exposed subjects and controls with homozygous butyrylcholinesterase genotype (p = 0.007) and 20.8% and 14.3% with homozygous acetylcholinesterase genotype (p = 0.792), respectively. Multivariate logistic regression analyses found that odds ratio of hypertriglyceridaemia is 21.92 and 4.56 for pesticide-exposed subjects with homozygous genotype of butyrylcholinesterase (p = 0.001) and acetylcholinesterase (p = 0.036), respectively.

Conclusions

Cholinesterase homozygous genotype might be a potential susceptible biomarker in screening pesticide-exposed agricultural workers vulnerable to hypertriglyceridaemia.

Keywords:

• Hypertriglyceridaemia
• cholinesterase
• thyroid hormones
• gene polymorphism
• pesticide exposure
• agricultural workers

Acknowledgements

None to declare.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by the Young Talents Project of Beijing Municipal Institute of Labour Protection [2020–2021], the Reform and Development Project of Beijing Municipal Institute of Labour Protection [2020/2021], BJAST-RD [PY2021] and the Youth Plan of Beijing Academy of Science and Technology [YC201809]. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.