[Pharmwaste] How males become females (article)

[Tenace, Laurie]

http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=143&art_id=nw20070227135
626713C257010


How males become females... 

    February 27 2007 at 04:43PM  
 
Paris - Frogs that started life as male tadpoles were changed in an
experiment into females by oestrogen-like pollutants similar to those found
in the environment, according to a new study.

The results may shed light on at least one reason that up to a third of frog
species around the world are threatened with extinction, suggests the study,
set to appear in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry in May. 

In a laboratory at Uppsala University in Sweden, two species of frogs were
exposed to levels of oestrogen similar to those detected in natural bodies of
water in Europe, the United States and Canada.

The results were startling: whereas the percentage of females in two control
groups was under 50 percent - not unusual among frogs - the sex ratio in
three pairs of groups maturing in water dosed with different levels of
oestrogen were significantly skewed.

Even tadpoles exposed to the weakest concentration of the hormone were, in
one of two groups, twice as likely to become females.

The population of the two groups receiving the heaviest dose of oestrogen
became 95 percent female in one case, and 100 percent in the other.

"The results are quite alarming," said co-author Cecilia Berg, a research in
environmental toxicology. "We see these dramatic changes by exposing the
frogs to a single substance. In nature there could be lots of other compounds
acting together."

Earlier studies in the United States, Berg explained, linked a similar
sex-reversal of Rana pipiens male frogs - one of the two species used in the
experiment - in the wild to a pesticide that produced oestrogen-like
compounds.

"Pesticides and other industrial chemicals have the ability to act like
oestrogen in the body," Berg said. "That is what inspired us to do the
experiment," she said referring to her collaborator and lead author of the
article, Irina Pettersson, also a researcher at Uppsala.

The other species examined was the European common frog, Rana temporaria.

Some of sex-altered males became fully functioning females, but other had
ovaries but no oviducts, making them sterile, Berg explained.

The study does not measure the potential impact of pollutant-driven sex
change for frog species, but the implications, said Berg, are disquieting.

"Obviously if all the frogs become female it could have a detrimental effect
on the population," she said.

The only immediate remedy, she continued, would be to improve sewage
treatment in areas where frogs and other amphibians might be affected to
filter out oestrogen concentrations coming from contraceptive pills and from
industrial pollutants.
 

Laurie J. Tenace
Environmental Specialist
Florida Department of Environmental Protection
2600 Blair Stone Road, MS 4555
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-2400
PH: (850) 245-8759
FAX: (850) 245-8811
Laurie.Tenace at dep.state.fl.us 

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