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Effects of lead and cadmium on the immune system and cancer progression

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Abstract

In our daily life, we are surrounded by harmful pollutants, including heavy metals that are not visible in the macroscopic view easily. Heavy metals can disrupt different aspects of human health, such as the immune system which has gained a lot of attention in recent decades. This had led to its rapid progression and new insights into its alterations in different diseases especially cancer. Heavy metals are non-biodegradable materials that exist in different parts of the food cycle, such as fruits and vegetables as commonly consumed foods and also unexpected sources such as street dust, that exists in the streets that we pass every day, soil, air, and water. These heavy metals can enter the human body through respiratory, cutaneous, and gastrointestinal pathways and then accumulate in different organs, leading to their encountering with various parts of the body. These sources and natural characteristics of heavy metals facilitate their interaction with the immune system. In this review, we investigated the effect of lead and cadmium, as pollutants that exist in many different parts of the human environment, on the immune system which is known to have a key role in the pathophysiology of cancer.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

    Maryam Ebrahimi

  2. Cancer Immunology Project (CIP), Universal Scientific Education and Research Network (USERN), Tehran, Iran

    Maryam Ebrahimi, Neda Khalili, Sepideh Razi, Mahsa Keshavarz-Fathi & Nastaran Khalili

  3. School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Neda Khalili, Mahsa Keshavarz-Fathi & Nastaran Khalili

  4. Student Research Committee, School of Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Sepideh Razi

  5. Research Center for Immunodeficiencies, Children’s Medical Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Nima Rezaei

  6. Department of Immunology, School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Nima Rezaei

  7. Cancer Immunology Project (CIP), Universal Scientific Education and Research Network (USERN), Southampton, UK

    Nima Rezaei

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  1. Maryam Ebrahimi
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  2. Neda Khalili
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  3. Sepideh Razi
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Ebrahimi, M., Khalili, N., Razi, S. et al. Effects of lead and cadmium on the immune system and cancer progression. J Environ Health Sci Engineer 18, 335–343 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40201-020-00455-2

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