iee.psu.edu/news/podcast/growing-impact-pfas-and-human-health" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">latest episode of Growing Impact discusses how environmental contaminants affect human health, a research focus for Penn State professors Andrew Patterson and Costas Maranas. Environmental contaminants can directly influence human health by dysregulating typical biological processes and giving rise to diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and respiratory disease. They can also indirectly shape an individual's health by altering a person's microbiome, the vast community of microorganisms that live within the human body. These microbes have a significant influence on a person's health.
For years, Patterson, the John T. and Paige S. Smith Professor in the College of Agricultural Sciences, has studied the communication between human bodies with their microbiomes. Patterson has worked closely with Maranas, the Donald B. Broughton Professor of Chemical Engineering, whose work straddles the world of biotechnology, biophysics and biochemistry. In 2016, Patterson and Maranas were awarded an Institute of Energy and the Environment seed grant that explored how perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a type of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), might affect the human microbiome and influence obesity. Since then, Patterson was awarded a $7 million National Institutes of Health grant to investigate how environmental chemical exposure impacts the gut microbiome.
"When I first came to Penn State in 2011, one of my big interests was understanding how chemicals that we're exposed to impact us," Patterson said. "PFAS, perfluorinated substances were on everyone's radar, more than ten years ago. But beyond that, we also were looking at other environmental chemicals that we know to be exposed to daily."
Patterson said that PFAS have been detected in nearly all humans and in locations all over the Earth, raising concerns about their long-term health effects.
"Those molecules are designed to be incredibly stable and non-reactive. So, by design, they don't interfere with life's chemistries very much," Maranas said. "But when you start building up at high abundances, you don't know what would happen."
Patterson said there are important unanswered questions about whether exposure to PFAS alters the microbiome in ways that could be beneficial or harmful, potentially increasing susceptibility to conditions like inflammatory bowel disease.
"I think this is something that from a toxicology standpoint, we've not fully considered, thinking of microbes as targets or toxicity endpoints," Patterson said. "I can look at my toxicology textbooks and there's no section on the microbiome. This is something that probably will be added because now we appreciate that this is really important, and we need to better understand how this interaction occurs."
According to Patterson, a major question is whether early-life or birth exposure to environmental contaminants like PFAS could negatively influence a person's long-term health trajectory.
"There's been a lot of evidence with antibiotic exposure, so there's good evidence to show that this causes problems," Patterson said. "The same can be true for these chemicals. If they're manipulating or altering the microbial community in a way that perhaps is a contributor to some of our more modern health problems, that's something researchers are working to uncover."
"Growing Impact" is a podcast by the Institute of Energy and the Environment. It features Penn State researchers who have been awarded IEE seed grants and discusses their foundational work as they further their projects. The podcast is available on multiple platforms, including YouTube, Apple, Amazon and Spotify.
