UMass prof, team will zero in on PFAS and bone loss in grant-funded $5M study

According to a study by the U.S. Geological Survey, 45% of the tap water in the United States is contaminated with “forever chemicals” that are considered dangerous to human health.

According to a study by the U.S. Geological Survey, 45% of the tap water in the United States is contaminated with “forever chemicals” that are considered dangerous to human health. Leonard Ortiz/The Orange County Register/TNS

KATHERINE REEVES

KATHERINE REEVES

By SCOTT MERZBACH

Staff Writer

Published: 10-08-2024 1:06 PM

Modified: 10-08-2024 4:14 PM


AMHERST — Better understanding of how certain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, often simply called PFAS and known as “forever chemicals,” negatively affect public health and cause assorted maladies, is leading to state and federal laws and prohibitions on their use.

And while they’ve been implicated in potentially causing kidney disease, liver damage and fertility complications, a new study presents an opportunity to establish a direct connection between PFAS chemicals and bone loss.

With a nearly $5 million, five-year National Institutes for Health grant, a University of Massachusetts epidemiology researcher in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences is committed to learning whether an accumulation of PFAS in human tissue increases the risk of bone loss, as a substantial amount of literature in laboratories and animal studies already indicates.

“This project is aimed at filling that gap,” Katherine Reeves, associate dean of graduate and professional studies and professor of epidemiology, says of the research initiative, titled “Serum PFAS and risk of fracture and bone loss” in her grant application.

Brittle bones in aging people and resulting bone fractures not only compromise the quality of life of those afflicted, but lead to expensive medical bills. About 2 million bone fractures occur each year in the United States due to weakened or osteoporotic bones at an estimated health care cost of $17 billion.

“We’re really excited about this project, to use this grant opportunity to learn about how these chemicals could be having harmful effects on bones and causing a lot of problems for people’s health,” Reeves said.

According to the abstract from the application posted on the NIH website, “We have an excellent opportunity to capitalize on pre-existing data and biospecimens to conduct a rigorous evaluation of the associations between PFAS and fracture risk, bone mineral density, and bone turnover in a diverse study population.”

PFAS have been used in consumer products for nonstick, water- and stain-resistant coatings for cookware and clothing, as well as for artificial turf and firefighting foam, and these chemicals remain stable in the environment rather than breaking down. Reeves estimates that about 98% of the U.S. population is exposed to these forever chemicals, often through drinking water.

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“Our overarching hypothesis is that PFAS concentrations are associated with increased bone loss and fracture risk,” Reeves said.

Reeves said she has long had interest in environmental chemicals and how they affect health risks, though most of this has been centered on cancer, with an ongoing project, funded with a two-year, $405,000 grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, studying how PFAS exposure can increase breast cancer risk, using tissue samples donated to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Tissue Bank.

The latest project will access an NIH biobank where blood samples are stored from over the past 20 years from those who participated in two of the largest prospective studies of osteoporosis, the Osteoporotic Fractures in Men Study and the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures. Because those are overwhelmingly white participants, Reeves will also be able to access a third cohort through the Health Aging and Body Composition Study, a more racially and ethnically diverse group that will be used to validate the findings by her team of researchers.

The 7,000 blood serum samples will arrive at UMass and then be analyzed at a commercial laboratory in North Carolina, where they will be assayed for different PFAS chemicals. The research team will use the measurements of up to 25 PFAS chemicals in the blood serum samples and perform an in-depth study of bone loss and fractures to see whether these can be correlated with fracture risk.

Researchers will use a new model of statistical techniques to get the PFAS measurements and then combine this with bone density information, as well as people’s diets and medications, along with other factors.

“Taking advantage of amazing research and follow up for 20 years can get answers much more quickly,” Reeves said.

Reeves said within a year to 18 months, she hopes to have a preliminary findings report and present at conferences.

Two doctoral students are coordinating the project at the moment.

“It provides great training opportunities for them,” Reeves said. She anticipates more graduate and undergraduate students will be involved along the way.

In addition, researchers at Stony Brook University are looking at heavy metals in the same biospecimens, which could lead to additional findings as to how these and PFAS chemicals might interact.

“As our population ages, low bone-mineral density has a huge impact on population health,” Reeves said. “Once individuals have a fracture as they age, it often unfortunately leads to other subsequent negative health outcomes.”

Bone is continually remodeling, getting broken down and then rebuilding.

“So there is a lot of opportunity for chemicals to interfere with that very delicate balancing act of breaking down and rebuilding bone,” Reeves says.

Bone-mineral density naturally declines with age, she notes, “But there have been some human studies suggesting that people with higher exposure to certain PFAS chemicals actually experience a more rapid decline in their bone-mineral density than those with lower exposure.”

She points to a study in Sweden that found a higher-than-anticipated risk of fracture among people living in an area with known PFAS contamination.

“It’s a really important health condition that we should be paying attention to,” Reeves said. “And we’re hoping that this study will inform efforts to regulate these chemicals and also help us to understand ways that we could potentially intervene in populations that are known to have high exposure to these chemicals.”

More restrictions and an accelerated phaseout of PFAS may be the end result.

“Part of what I’m hoping the research will do is [help] to regulate chemicals as a class,” Reeves said.

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.