In vitro biomonitoring of environmental estrogens in coastal surface waters of three Italian Marine Protected Areas.

An ecotoxicogenomic study was conducted to assess the estrogenic activity in surface waters of three marine areas in the central Adriatic Sea: the Conero Park, the Torre del Cerrano Marine Protected Area and the Tremiti Islands Marine Protected Area, Italy. Potential estrogenic effect of seawater extracts from C18 cartridges was tested on Sparus aurata hepatocytes using both estrogen receptors (ERs) and vitellogenin (vtg) expression profiles as biomarkers to determine the presence of xenoestrogens. Overall, examination of extracts from 37 different stations showed estrogenic responses. The vtg gene was the most highly expressed gene in hepatocytes exposed to water samples from stations located in inner coastal waters and responded less to those from outer located stations. Vtg gene was expressed nearly 1.5-fold by surface waters from sea areas with intense maritime traffic and increased to a maximum of 3.5-fold in the waters sampled from stations located in front of river mouths. Thus, contamination of marine protected areas by biologically relevant concentrations of xenoestrogens has been observed indicating that the total exposure to anthropogenic estrogens into these environments is higher in nature due to combined presence of unknown estrogen active compounds that are not chemically monitored and with unknown impact. In addition, our study provides further evidence that S. aurata hepatocyte assay for measuring vtg mRNA levels can be used as valuable tool for identifying the presence of environmental estrogens.