Discriminating reprotoxic and non-reprotoxic phthalates by transcriptomics analysis of rat testis

Male rats were treated with a single dose of either reprotoxic or non-reprotoxic phthalates and sacrificed 24h thereafter. Subsequently, histopathological and gene-expression profiling analyses were performed. Despite ambiguous histopathological observations, we were able to distinguish the reprotoxic from the non-reprotoxic phthalates based on differential gene expression. This shows that differences in gene expression indicative for the type of exposure can be detected earlier, or at lower doses, than phenotypic tissue damage. These findings are promising for ’early warning’ biomarker analyses and for using toxicogenomics in a category approach.