MONITORING OF PESTICIDES CHRONIC TOXICITY AMONG EXPOSED WORKERS BY USING EFFECT BIOMARKERS

*Hamdi Abdulwahab Alhakimi, Anas Yahya Alghamdi and Ahmad Hamza Alabbasi, Omar Abdulaziz Alzahrani and Abdullah Sinhat Alsahli

ABSTRACT

Background: Workers who regularly use pesticides at increasing risk of pesticides toxicity. Monitoring of pesticides chronic toxicity is necessary to prevent long term health hazards. This review aimed to compare the validity of cholinesterase biomarkers to that of cytogenetic biomarkers in assessment of pesticides chronic toxicity. Methods: Medline and Cochrane library are searched electronically to collect studies which conducted cholinesterase and cytogenetic biomarkers simultaneously among pesticides exposed workers. A total of 1249 papers have found. After excluding of irrelevant, ineligible, duplicate and very low quality papers, only 16 studies are included in this systematic review. As a gold standard test was absent, we had to validate these biomarkers in order to compare them together. Validation had two phases, phase1 the ability of biomarkers to detect a significant difference between pesticides exposed and non-exposed workers. Phase 2 is purposed to determine a dose-response relationship and to control for confounding. Results: at the study level, the cytogenetic biomarkers have a higher reliability (100%) than cholinesterase biomarkers (75%) for detection of statistically significant difference between chronically exposed and non exposed workers. Furthermore, within studies using cholinesterase biomarkers, erythrocyte cholinesterase (E chE) has higher reliability (78%) than plasma cholinesterase (P AchE) (62%). There is a significant association between duration of exposure and results of cytogenetic biomarkers. This association found to be less evident between duration of exposure and (E chE), and it is absent between duration of exposure and (P AchE). Conclusion: The cytogenetic biomarkers have more reliability than cholinesterase biomarkers in assessment of chronic toxicity caused by pesticides exposure.

Keywords: cholinesterase, cytogenetic, Medline and Cochrane.