Associations between benzophenone-3 and sex steroid hormones among United States adult men

It has been demonstrated that benzophenone-3 is one of the endocrine-disrupting compounds which are considered as potential risk factors of adverse health effects. However, whether benzophenone-3 exposure can influence the sex steroid hormones levels remains unknown. We used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which is a cross-sectional dataset, from 2013 to 2016. A total of 1690 male US participants aged 18 or above were included. Urinary benzophenone-3, serum total testosterone, serum estradiol, serum sex hormone-binding globulin were measured. Confounders including age, body mass index, race, education level, urinary creatinine, ratio of family income to poverty, alcohol use, time of venipuncture, cardiac arterial diabetic score, energy intake, bisphenol A, triclosan and total parabens were controlled. After full adjustment (Model III), the upper benzophenone-3 quintiles had odds ratios (95 % confidence intervals) of testosterone deficiency of 1.75 (1.03, 2.99), 2.47 (1.53, 3.98), 2.08 (1.13, 3.84) and 1.74 (0.94, 3.23) compared with quintile 1. Compared with quintile 1, percent changes (95 % confidence intervals) in testosterone were - 12 % (-19 %, -5 %) and - 9 % (-17 %, -1 %) for quintile 3 and quintile 5 in Model III. Estradiol and sex hormone-binding globulin were generally similar to total testosterone in the associations with benzophenone-3. In conclusion, our results demonstrated that adult men in the US with higher urinary benzophenone-3 had a higher risk of testosterone deficiency and had inverse associations with total testosterone, estradiol and sex hormone-binding globulin. To confirm the causal links between benzophenone-3 and sex steroid hormones, prospective studies are needed.