Abstract
Objective To lessen the burden of diabetes, we explored the relationship between obesity and single and mixed plasma organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) exposure and the mediating roles of 13 health indicators in the correlations mentioned above among 894 rural Chinese adults with prediabetes.Methods The effects of plasma OCPs on obesity and obese anthropometric measurements were assessed by generalized linear regression models for single exposure, and quantile g-computation (QGC) and LASSO regression for mixed exposure. The potential mediating roles of multiple health indicators were explored through mediation analyses.Results We discovered that β-BHC and p,p'-DDE were related to obesity for single exposure. QGC and LASSO demonstrated that OCPs were positively correlated with a higher likelihood of obesity for mixed exposure, with β-BHC being the primary contributor. Mediation analyses found that systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), triglyceride (TG), high-density lipoprotein-Cholesterol (HDL-C), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), and aspartate aminotransferase / alanine aminotransferase (AST/ALT) played significantly mediating roles in the relationship of β-BHC on obesity, with the estimated mediation proportion ranging from 9.0–40.5%.Conclusions Our findings suggest that liver function damage and lipid metabolism disorders may be one of the biological pathways by which OCPs exposure induces obesity risk.