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Penuelas J, Gargallo-Garriga A, Janssens IA, Ciais P, Obersteiner M, Klem K, Urban O, Zhu YG, Sardans J. Could Global Intensification of Nitrogen Fertilisation Increase Immunogenic Proteins and Favour the Spread of Coeliac Pathology? Foods 2020; 9:E1602. [PMID: 33158083 PMCID: PMC7694225 DOI: 10.3390/foods9111602] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/09/2020] [Revised: 10/30/2020] [Accepted: 11/02/2020] [Indexed: 12/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Fertilisation of cereal crops with nitrogen (N) has increased in the last five decades. In particular, the fertilisation of wheat crops increased by nearly one order of magnitude from 1961 to 2010, from 9.84 to 93.8 kg N ha-1 y-1. We hypothesized that this intensification of N fertilisation would increase the content of allergenic proteins in wheat which could likely be associated with the increased pathology of coeliac disease in human populations. An increase in the per capita intake of gliadin proteins, the group of gluten proteins principally responsible for the development of coeliac disease, would be the responsible factor. We conducted a global meta-analysis of available reports that supported our hypothesis: wheat plants growing in soils receiving higher doses of N fertilizer have higher total gluten, total gliadin, α/β-gliadin, γ-gliadin and ω-gliadin contents and higher gliadin transcription in their grain. We thereafter calculated the per capita annual average intake of gliadins from wheat and derived foods and found that it increased from 1961 to 2010 from approximately 2.4 to 3.8 kg y-1 per capita (+1.4 ± 0.18 kg y-1 per capita, mean ± SE), i.e., increased by 58 ± 7.5%. Finally, we found that this increase was positively correlated with the increase in the rates of coeliac disease in all the available studies with temporal series of coeliac disease. The impacts and damage of over-fertilisation have been observed at an environmental scale (e.g., eutrophication and acid rain), but a potential direct effect of over-fertilisation is thus also possible on human health (coeliac disease).
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Affiliation(s)
- Josep Penuelas
- CSIC, Global Ecology Unit CREAF-CSIC-UAB, Bellaterra, 08193 Catalonia, Spain; (A.G.-G.); (J.S.)
- CREAF, Cerdanyola del Valles, 08193 Catalonia, Spain
- Global Change Research Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences, CZ-60300 Brno, Czech Republic; (K.K.); (O.U.)
| | - Albert Gargallo-Garriga
- CSIC, Global Ecology Unit CREAF-CSIC-UAB, Bellaterra, 08193 Catalonia, Spain; (A.G.-G.); (J.S.)
- CREAF, Cerdanyola del Valles, 08193 Catalonia, Spain
- Global Change Research Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences, CZ-60300 Brno, Czech Republic; (K.K.); (O.U.)
| | - Ivan A. Janssens
- Research Group Plants and Ecosystems (PLECO), Department of Biology, University of Antwerp, B-2610 Wilrijk, Belgium;
| | - Philippe Ciais
- Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences, Institute Pierre Simon Laplace (PSL), 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France;
| | - Michael Obersteiner
- Ecosystems Services and Management, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria;
| | - Karel Klem
- Global Change Research Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences, CZ-60300 Brno, Czech Republic; (K.K.); (O.U.)
| | - Otmar Urban
- Global Change Research Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences, CZ-60300 Brno, Czech Republic; (K.K.); (O.U.)
| | - Yong-Guan Zhu
- Key Laboratory of Urban Environment and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen 361021, China;
- State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Centre for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China
| | - Jordi Sardans
- CSIC, Global Ecology Unit CREAF-CSIC-UAB, Bellaterra, 08193 Catalonia, Spain; (A.G.-G.); (J.S.)
- CREAF, Cerdanyola del Valles, 08193 Catalonia, Spain
- Global Change Research Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences, CZ-60300 Brno, Czech Republic; (K.K.); (O.U.)
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