(Joe Battaglia)

About a week ago, I went to the Symposium on “New Insights Into the Effects of Lead Poisoning On Children and Adults” in Philadelphia that presented some very interesting background information and new research about lead poisoning.  Presenting that morning were: 

1. John Rosen, MD Montefiore Hospital and Medical Center
2. Jay Schneider, Ph.D  – Thomas Jefferson University College of Medicine
3. Theodore Lidsky, Ph. D – New York State Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities.
4. Leann C. Howell, Founder and President – American Lead Poisoning Help Association.  

Overview:

The panel was framed by Leann’s story of her son’s lead poisoning as a result of improper rehab techniques on an old house.  She’d met Rosen, Schneider, and Lidsky in her journey to understand the disease and garner help in working with the schools as her son, who was rated to have a very high IQ (135) began to fail as he entered middle school. Over time, she contacted each of these specialists, and needed all of them to lobby for her with her school district to get proper modifications for her son.  (He is now performing well).  Rosen, Schneider, and Lidsky were introduced to present their research and findings about lead’s effects on the brain, brain development, and explained new findings on the mechanism for lead’s damage at a molecular level.

Some of the more exciting findings:

• Lead effects the brain deleteriously in many ways: (at much lower levels than 10)
  • It effects both structure and function – Fewer cells, more confused structure.
  • It alters the proliferation and differentiation of stem cells and can alter the expression of stem cells
  • Lead alters the transmission of signals between neurons (affecting in some cases both neurotransmitter production and reception).
  • Childhood lead poisoning is correlated with decreased brain volume in adults.
• Epigenetics is thought to be the common thread that ties together the mechanism of how lead poisons such a broad range of organs and systems. This means that at a molecular level lead is effecting the expression of certain genes (not mutating them -turning them on or off) in just the specific focused areas that we see with lead poisoning – hypertension, kidney disease, attention, regulation of emotion, memory retrieval, etc.  It is called DNA Methylation – methyl groups attach to DNA to alter the function and under or over express the gene as it was meant to be expressed. For example, one gene was found to be hypermethylated (activity is decreased) that is a gene for a gluco-cortisoid receptor that mediates the HPA Axis in the brain (hypothalmus) – that receptor mediates response to stress. Lead poisoning, at the genetic level, lowers the switch to power this receptor.
• Males have twice the susceptibility as females – at the genetic level, boys demonstrate twice the number of effected genes as girls with the same level of exposure.
• IQ tests are terrible measures of brain injury – they are too broad. 
• All had the conclusion – there is no threshold for the adverse effects of lead (some of the effects on brain structure, loss of complexity, confusion of transmission, etc happened at very low levels -1/1000th of a dose that would cause cell death).
• Rosen confirms strongly that only safe intervention is a primary intervention to remove all lead.

This was a very rich presentation.  They will post it to their website (a video was taken). We will Tweet when the link is available.