Hypertension risk is associated with elevated concentrations of rare earth elements in serum.

BACKGROUND: Hypertension is a major contributor to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, affecting over 17.1 million individuals worldwide. Environmental exposure such as toxic trace elements could be risk factors for hypertension, but the associations of toxic metal exposure with hypertension are not well understood. METHODS: We recruited 400 volunteers consisting of 200 patients with hypertension (cases) and 200 healthy individuals without hypertension (controls). In the case or control group, half of the subjects came from the rare earth mining (REM) areas and the other half from non-REM areas. Serum levels of 8 rare earth elements (REEs) and 13 non-REEs were determined. RESULTS: The concentrations of Ce and La were significant higher in the cases than in the controls in all comparisons. Serum concentrations of Mg, Mn, Dy, Ce and La were positively correlated with blood pressure, while those of concentrations K and Se were negatively correlated with blood pressure (p < 0.05). Compared with the lowest quartiles, participants in the highest quartiles of Sm, Gd, Dy, Yb, La and Ce had a 6.01-fold (95 % CI: 2.28, 15.8), 3.29-fold (95 % CI: 1.18, 9.16), 4.07-fold (95 % CI: 1.51,10.9), 7.83-fold (95 % CI: 2.78, 22.4), 20.00-fold (95 % CI: 5.48-72.9) and 6.13-fold (95 % CI: 2.13-17.6) increase in the probability of having hypertension respectively. Among all the detected metals, the univariate odds ratios (UORs) and adjusted odds ratios (AORs) of hypertension for highest vs. lowest quartile serum concentrations of Sm, Gd, Dy, Yb, La and Ce were significantly > 1 (p < 0.05), with the positive dose-response relationships observed between their serum levels and ORs associated with hypertension risk. CONCLUSIONS: Collectively, there appears to be a positive correlation between hypertension and environmental exposure to REEs, especially La and Ce. Further studies are warranted to investigate the underlying mechanisms responsible for the risk.

Antibiotic resistance of fecal carriage of Escherichia coli from pig farms in China: a meta-analysis.

Fecal carriage of bacteria is a major source of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and a public health risk, but the antibiotic resistance of Escherichia coli (E. coli) in Chinese pig farms remains a major gap in the available literature. Our goal was to conduct a meta-analysis of studies reporting antibiotic resistance of fecal carriage of E. coli from pig farms in China, calculating the pooled resistance rates and summarizing factors associated with it. We searched PubMed and Web of Science for studies published in English up to February 28, 2021. We also searched bibliographic indices and corresponded with the authors. We chose ciprofloxacin, gentamicin, tetracycline, ampicillin, and florfenicol from five major types of antibiotics to comprehensively evaluate the resistance rate of E. coli. We used a random-effects model and Freeman-Tukey double arcsine transformation to calculate the resistance rate and 95% confidence interval. Among the 120 retrieved manuscripts, 16 studies (1985 E. coli isolates) were deemed eligible for our analysis. The combined resistance rate of E. coli from feces was 58.8% (95% CI: 45.3-71.7%) to ciprofloxacin, 54.3% (95% CI: 35.3-72.6%) to gentamicin, 91.0% (95% CI: 83.1-96.7%) to tetracycline, 81.4% (95% CI: 62.0-95.1%) to ampicillin, and 65.4% (95% CI: 33.9-90.9%) to florfenicol. In conclusion, fecal carriage of E. coli in Chinese pig farms shows high resistance to ciprofloxacin, gentamicin, tetracycline, ampicillin, and florfenicol. Subgroup analysis showed that the resistance of E. coli to antibiotics was closely related to the sample size and the health condition of the pigs. Specifically, ESBL-producing E. coli has a higher ratio of resistance to other antibiotics. Future collection of antibiotic resistance and other information in pig farms should be more precise and depend on local surveys.