Bisphenol A and Insulin Resistance

An interesting piece of news in the current issue of Environmental Health Perspectives is research indicating that bisphenol A (BPA) causes insulin resistance in mice similar to that seen just before the onset of type 2 diabetes. The BPA dose that was high enough to cause insulin resistance in mice was in the same range as the 50 ug/kg-day Reference Dose developed by EPA.

This is pretty interesting stuff, as well as potentially highly significant in a public health context, when you consider the prevalence of diabetes and the widespread potential for exposure to BPA.

One of the things I would like to get from the paper (it’s late in the evening – I’ll read it later this week) is how dose-dependent the effect might be. The finding that effects are observed in animals in the range of the RfD makes me wonder what might be happening to plastics workers who probably receive higher exposures to BPA than the general public. Is it possible for workplace exposures to BPA to be associated with an incidence of diabetes that could be observed epidemiologically?