In vivo effects of short-term treatment with Bisphenol A (BPA) on mice pancreatic islets

Bisphenol-A (BPA) is one of the most widespread endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDC) used as the base compound in the manufacture of polycarbonate plastics. Although evidence points to consider exposure to BPA as a risk factor for the development of Diabetes, its actions on whole body metabolism and on pancreatic beta cells are still unclear. The aim of this study was to study the in vivo effects of BPA on mice pancreatic islets, particularly on how it could regulate ion channels expression and function. And thus, bringing mechanistic insight into the suggested association between BPA exposure and health disorders. We used microarrays to detail the global profile of gene expression to identified different groups of up and down-regulated genes in the work model, with a special focus on genes related to ion channel-mediated actions of BPA in mice pancreatic β-cells. OF1 male mice (10 weeks of age) were used throughout this study. An internal animal care and use committee reviewed and approved the method used (the Ethics Committee from Universidad Miguel Hernández de Elche (Alicante, Spain) (approvals ID: UMH-IB-AN-01–14 and UMH-IB-AN-02-14). BPA was dissolved in tocopherol-stripped corn oil (MP Biomedicals), and a total of 100 μg/kg/day (two injections of 50 μg/kg/day) was administered subcutaneously for four days; the same volume of tocopherol-stripped corn oil (100 μL) was used as vehicle in control animals. Sixteen hours after last injection islets were isolated and prepared for RNA extraction and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays. We analyzed 3 independent experiments per replicate, and we did 3 replicates per sample.