Evidence that humans metabolize benzene via two pathways.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Recent evidence has shown that humans metabolize benzene more efficiently at environmental air concentrations than at concentrations > 1 ppm. This led us to speculate that an unidentified metabolic pathway was mainly responsible for benzene metabolism at ambient levels.

Objective

We statistically tested whether human metabolism of benzene is better fitted by a kinetic model having two pathways rather than one.

Methods

We fit Michaelis-Menten-like models to levels of urinary benzene metabolites and the corresponding air concentrations for 263 nonsmoking Chinese females. Estimated benzene concentrations ranged from less than 0.001 ppm to 299 ppm, with 10th and 90th percentile values of 0.002 ppm and 8.97 ppm, respectively.

Results

Using values of Akaik

SUBMITTER: Rappaport SM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2702411 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature