Authors
Guangming Li, Keyi Si, Jie Zhang, Xixi Chen, Xiaotao Shen, Vicente Mustieles, Audrey J Gaskins, Miao Li, Fengjiang Sun, Tian-Qing Meng, An Pan, Chong Liu, Da Chen, Lili Huang, Xiaocui Li, Yi-Xin Wang
Published in
Journal of hazardous materials. Volume 517. Pages 143663. Sep 18, 2026. Epub Sep 18, 2026.
Abstract
This study investigated the associations between exposure to 16 per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), seminal plasma metabolome, and sperm telomere length (STL) and mitochondrial DNA copy number (mtDNAcn) among more than 1000 healthy Chinese men screened as potential sperm donors. No associations were observed between PFAS concentrations in blood or seminal plasma and sperm mtDNAcn. However, PFAS concentrations in seminal plasma, but not blood plasma, were associated with longer STL in both single-chemical and mixture models (all FDR-adjusted P < 0.05). Metabolome-wide association analyses identified 79 metabolites associated with seminal PFAS concentrations and 62 metabolites associated with STL. Among these, 18 overlapping metabolites were enriched in pathways related to steroid metabolism and unsaturated fatty acid metabolism, suggesting potential metabolic processes linking seminal PFAS exposure with STL. Exploratory indirect-effect analyses further identified 12 metabolites with indirect-effect proportions ranging from 5.6% to 15.2%. Our findings provide novel insights into potential metabolic pathways linking PFAS exposure with sperm telomere biology and highlight the utility of untargeted metabolomics for generating hypotheses about potential biological mechanisms.
PMID:
42809965
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 30 Sep 2026.
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