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shy
Crypt Keeper
 
Australia
2014 Posts |
 Posted - 02 July 2006 : 4:36:34 PM
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Personal-care products containing tea tree oils and lavender appear to cause abnormal breast development in pre-pubescent boys, a new study found.
The ingredients, which have an estrogen-like effect, are found in various shampoos, lotions, soaps and other products.
"There’s definitely an association between exposure to lavender oil and tea tree oil and gynecomastia [abnormally large breasts in men]," said Derek Henley, lead author of the research and a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, in Research Triangle Park, N.C.
Henley stopped short of declaring a cause-and-effect relationship, but did emphasize that the information could help physicians identify cases of gynecomastia that have no readily apparent cause.
Dr. Edward Reiter, chairman of pediatrics at Bay State Children’s Hospital in Springfield, Mass., added, "The issue is a Sherlock Holmes kind of thing.
Henley presented the findings at the just-completed annual meeting of the Endocrine Society, in Boston.
Reiter was moderator of a press conference announcing the findings.
Gynecomastia is associated with an imbalance of estrogens (so-called female hormones) and androgens (so-called male hormones).
Young boys don’t produce much testosterone, so there is nothing in the body to counteract extra estrogen, such as might come from mistakenly taking a mother’s birth control pill or, more concerning, an estrogen-secreting tumor.
"I may see a patient every year or every other year with this, a pre-pubertal boy who has some breast development," Reiter said.
When tested on human breast cancer cells, the oils appeared to mimic the activity of estrogen and also suppressed male hormone responsiveness.
After discontinuing use of the lavender and tea tree oils, all of the boys saw the problem resolved.
- Source: HealthDay News, for Forbes.com, June 28, 2006
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Personal-Care Products Can Spur Breast Development
