Authors: Chunhua Liu Xijin Xu Xia Huo
Publish Date: 2014/01/29
Volume: 21, Issue: 8, Pages: 5457-5464
Abstract
Anogenital distance AGD a useful anthropometric measurement for genital development in both animals and humans was originally found by reproductive toxicologists in rodent experiments As an easytomeasure and sensitive marker AGD has become a bioassay of fetal androgen action and a wellestablished reproductive toxicity endpoint in animals It is generally accepted that AGD is sexually dimorphic in many mammals with males having longer AGD than females Exposure to proposed endocrine disruptors may result in reduced AGD thus it has been used to measure health effects of compounds with endocrinealtering properties or endocrinedisrupting chemicals EDCs in environmental toxicology Moreover AGD is an important clinical measure to address endocrinesensitive endpoints in the first year of life and to assess the adverse impact of in utero exposure to environmental EDCs Recently AGD has been identified as one of the endpoints in the US Environmental Protection Agency guidelines for reproductive toxicity studies in humans but use of AGD in human studies is still rare and the results remain mixed and inconclusive due to many reasons In order to achieve a breakthrough researchers are endeavoring to standardize the measurement of AGD normalize agespecific population data in different ethnic groups and conduct more indepth human researches in this field
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