{"doi":"10.1186/s12940-024-01078-y","title":"Ambient long-term exposure to organophosphorus pesticides and the human gut microbiome: an observational study","abstract":"BACKGROUND: Organophosphorus pesticides (OP) have been associated with various human health conditions. Animal experiments and in-vitro models suggested that OP may also affect the gut microbiota. We examined associations between ambient chronic exposure to OP and gut microbial changes in humans. METHODS: We recruited 190 participants from a community-based epidemiologic study of Parkinson's disease living in a region known for heavy agricultural pesticide use in California. Of these, 61% of participants had Parkinson's disease and their mean age was 72 years. Microbiome and predicted metagenome data were generated by 16S rRNA gene sequencing of fecal samples. Ambient long-term OP exposures were assessed using pesticide application records combined with residential addresses in a geographic information system. We examined gut microbiome differences due to OP exposures, specifically differences in microbial diversity based on the Shannon index and Bray-Curtis dissimilarities, and differential taxa abundance and predicted Metacyc pathway expression relying on regression models and adjusting for potential confounders. RESULTS: OP exposure was not associated with alpha or beta diversity of the gut microbiome. However, the predicted metagenome was sparser and less evenly expressed among those highly exposed to OP (p = 0.04). Additionally, we found that the abundance of two bacterial families, 22 genera, and the predicted expression of 34 Metacyc pathways were associated with long-term OP exposure. These pathways included perturbed processes related to cellular respiration, increased biosynthesis and degradation of compounds related to bacterial wall structure, increased biosynthesis of RNA/DNA precursors, and decreased synthesis of Vitamin B1 and B6. CONCLUSION: In support of previous animal studies and in-vitro findings, our results suggest that ambient chronic OP pesticide exposure alters gut microbiome composition and its predicted metabolism in humans.","journal":"Environmental Health","year":2024,"id":436539,"datarank":0.37273599746820013,"base_score":2.4849066497880004,"endowment":2.4849066497880004,"self_citation_contribution":0.37273599746820013,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.37273599746820013,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":11,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9341,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":316706,"name":"Kimberly C. Paul","orcid":"0000-0002-4476-2352","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":36336,"name":"Jonathan P. Jacobs","orcid":"0000-0003-4698-0254","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":292294,"name":"Myles Cockburn","orcid":"0000-0003-3658-6720","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":338794,"name":"Jeff M. Bronstein","orcid":"0000-0002-2961-8918","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":453690,"name":"Irish Del Rosario","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":292292,"name":"Beate Ritz","orcid":"0000-0001-8361-3870","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1244925,"name":"Keren Zhang","orcid":"0000-0001-9878-7101","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":78,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:00:16.989773Z","pmid":"38627687","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}