Benchmark dose approach in investigating the relationship between blood metal levels and reproductive hormones: Data set from human study

Abstract

The main objective of this research was to conduct a dose–response modeling between the internal dose of measured blood Cd, As, Hg, Ni, and Cr and hormonal response of serum testosterone, luteinizing hormone (LH), and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH). The study included 207 male participants from subjects of 5 different cohorts (patients with prostate, testicular, and pancreatic cancer, patients suffering from various thyroid and metabolic disorders, as well as healthy volunteers), enrolled from January 2019 to May 2021 at the Clinical Centre of Serbia in Belgrade, Serbia. Benchmark dose–response modeling analysis was performed with the PROAST software version 70.1, showing the hormone levels as quantal data. The averaging technique was applied to compute the Benchmark dose (BMD) interval (BMDI), with benchmark response set at 10%. Dose-response relationships between metal/metalloid blood concentration and serum hormone levels were confirmed for all the investigated metals/metalloid and hormones. The narrowest BMDI was found for Cd-testosterone and Hg-LH pairs, indicative of high confidence in these estimates. Although further research is needed, the observed findings demonstrate that the BMD approach may prove to be significant in the dose–response modeling of human data.