Association of low blood arsenic exposure with level of malondialdehyde among Chinese adults aged 65 and older

• DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143638
• Publication Date: 2020-11-20T01:18:42Z
• Authors: Qiyue Tan; Yuebin Lv; Feng Zhao; Jinhui Zhou; Yang Yang; Yingchun Liu; Mingyuan Zhang; Feng Lu; Yuan Wei; Xin Chen; Ruizhi Zhang; Chen Chen; Bing Wu; Xiaochang Zhang; Chengcheng Li; Hongyuan Huang; Junfang Cai; Zhaojin Cao; Di Yu; John S. Ji; Shuhua Zhao; Xiaoming Shi
• Keywords: Malondialdehyde; Quartile; Cross-sectional study

High environmental arsenic exposure can increase chronic oxidative stress in experimental studies and in occupational epidemiology studies. Many regulatory agencies have put forth arsenic exposure limits, it is still unclear that whether low environmental arsenic exposure was associated with adverse health outcome in general population. This study aimed to explore the association of low blood arsenic with malondialdehyde in community-dwelling older adults. We used a cross-sectional study of 2384 older adult individuals aged ≥65 years (mean age: 85 years) from the Healthy Aging and Biomarkers Cohort Study in 2017. The median blood arsenic level was 1.41 μg/L. High oxidative stress was categorized according to the 95th percentile of MDA levels (7.47 nmol/mL). Restricted cubic spline models showed that blood arsenic levels were positively associated with malondialdehyde levels (P < 0.01); and the risk of high oxidative stress was no longer significantly increased when blood arsenic level up to 8.74 μg/L. After adjusting for potential confounders, the odds ratios of high oxidative stress for the second, third, and fourth quartiles of blood arsenic were 2.35 (1.11-4.96), 3.87 (1.90-7.91), and 4.18 (2.00-8.72) (Ptrend < 0.01), compared with the first quartile. We concluded that even low arsenic exposure was associated with higher risk of oxidative stress, in a nonlinear dose-response.