Banrida Wahlang
University of Louisville, KY·Pharmacology
Persistent organic pollutants (POPs), often called "forever chemicals", resist breaking down and build up in the food supply. Higher POP levels, including organochlorine pesticides and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), have been associated with metabolic disorders.
- Fields
Pharmacology
Physiology
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
persistent organic pollutants
forever chemicals
polychlorinated biphenyls
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2031
What they work on
- Determine how exposure to a mixture of persistent organic pollutants, built to match current human exposure patterns, causes liver and metabolic damage differently in males and females.
- Test how a hypercaloric diet interacts with exposure to organochlorine pesticides and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) to drive steatotic (fatty) liver disease and metabolic dysfunction.
- Identify the mechanisms and disease signatures behind pollutant-driven metabolic toxicity that could point to sex-specific prevention and intervention strategies.
More about the research
These include metabolic syndrome, a cluster of risk factors such as high blood sugar and excess belly fat, and steatotic liver disease, in which fat accumulates in the liver. How these contaminants actually damage the liver and metabolism, and whether that harm differs between males and females, is still poorly understood. Exposure to POPs also often comes with poor nutrition and obesity.
Why it matters
Exposure to forever chemicals in food often falls hardest on people with poor nutrition and obesity. Learning how these pollutants harm the liver and metabolism differently in males and females could help health authorities identify disease signatures and at-risk groups. It could also guide sex-specific strategies to prevent or treat metabolic and fatty liver disease linked to contaminants.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Anna Pollack
George Mason University, VA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test whether higher levels of PFASs, POPs and their mixtures in healthy uterine (eutopic endometrial) tissue are associated with new endometriosis diagnoses among 495 women in the ENDO Study operative cohort.
Vaia Lida Chatzi
University of Southern California, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Examine associations of PFAS exposure with omics biomarkers and with obesity, type 2 diabetes, and MASLD (fatty liver disease) in more than 50,000 participants from 18 diverse cohorts.
Xiaotao Zhang
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Estimate recruitment, retention and diet adherence in adults with MASLD and F2–F3 fibrosis, verifying adherence with plasma pipecolic acid, a blood marker of bean intake, within a randomized crossover trial.
The school
University of Louisville: 15 labs on PI Pages, $225M a year on research, 159 research doctorates a year.
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