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Some endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) can affect the endocrine system through covalent interactions with specific sites, leading to deregulation of physiological homeostasis. The acrylamide (AA) present in some fried or baked foods is an example of an electrophile molecule that is able to form adducts with nucleophilic regions of nervous system proteins leading to neurological defects. A positive correlation between increased urinary AA metabolite concentration and reduced levels of thyroid hormones (TH) was described in adolescents and young adults. Thus, this study aimed to evaluate whether AA affects the physiology of the hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) axis and the possible repercussions in peripheral TH-target systems. For this, male Wistar rats were exposed to doses of 2.5 or 5.0 mg AA/Kg/day, based on the LOAEL (Lowest Observed Adverse Effect Level) during prepubertal development. The expression of molecular markers of HPT functionality was investigated in the hypothalamus, pituitary, thyroid, heart and liver, as well as the hormonal and lipid profiles in blood samples. Herein, we showed that AA acts as EDCs for thyroid gland function, increasing the transcript expression of several proteins related to TH synthesis and altering hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid axis homeostasis, an effect evidenced by the higher levels of THs in the serum. Compensatory mechanisms were observed in TH-target tissues, such as an increase in Dio3 mRNA expression in the liver and a reduction in Mct8 transcript content in the hearts of AA-treated rats. Together, these results pointed out an allostatic regulation of the HPT axis induced by AA and suggest that chronic exposure to it, mainly associated with food consumption, might be related to the higher prevalence of thyroid dysfunctions., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2020 The Author(s).)

The increase in human infertility prevalence due to male reproductive disorders has been associated with extensive endocrine-disrupting chemical (EDC) exposure. Acrylamide (AA) is a compound formed spontaneously during heat processing of some foods that are mainly consumed by children and adolescents. In this study, we evaluated the prepubertal AA exposure effects on male adult reproductive physiology using a prepubertal experimental model to analyze the pubertal development, spermatogenesis hormones levels and genes expression involved in male reproductive function. This study is the first one to use the validated protocol to correlate the AA exposure with puberty development, as well as the AA-induced endocrine disrupting effects on reproductive axis. AA did not affect the age at puberty, the reproductive organ's weight and serum hormonal levels. AA reduces spermatogenesis, induces morphological and functional defects on sperm and alters transcript expression of sexual hormone receptors (Ar and Esr2), the transcript expression of Tnf, Egr2, Rhcg and Lrrc34. These findings suggest that excessive AA consumption may impair their reproductive capacity at adulthood, despite no changes in hormonal profile being observed., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest All authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The endocrine system is highly sensitive to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDC) which interfere with metabolism, growth and reproduction throughout different periods of life, especially in the embryonic and pubertal stages, in which gene reprogramming may be associated with impaired development and control of tissues/organs even in adulthood. Acrylamide is considered a potential EDC and its main source comes from fried, baked and roasted foods that are widely consumed by children, teenagers and adults around the world. This review aimed to present some aspects regarding the acrylamide formation, its toxicokinetics, the occurrence of acrylamide in foods, the recent findings about its effects on different systems and the consequences for the human healthy. The challenges to characterize the molecular mechanisms triggered by acrylamide and to establish safe levels of consumption and/or exposure are also discussed in the present review., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: elderly's malnutrition is linked, among other factors, to chronic-degenerative diseases, requiring an improvement in the clinical evaluation of nutritional status of this population. Studies have tried to find out new tools to assess aged-people nutritional status. One of most used scales to investigate nutritional status on geriatric patients is the Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA)., Objective: the present study aims to evaluate nutritional status of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients, by comparison with a control group, via Mini Nutritional Assessment., Methods: a cross-sectional study, which includes 35 alzheimer's old-people and 43 control old-people, was performed evaluating nutritional status with MNA., Results: total score of MNA in the alzheimer group shows that 71.42% were in malnutrition risk, 14.28% were malnourished and 14.25% presented normal nutritional status. In addition, in the control group 79.06% of patients (n = 34) were classified as having normal nutritional status and 20.93% (n = 9), as being at risk of malnutrition., Conclusion: results reinforce the purpose that MNA can be used as a proper instrument to evaluate nutritional status in elderly, mainly in AD, because measuring risk and nutritional status of this population is indispensable.