, 2000). Other than cancer, epigenetic alterations have increasingly been detected and investigated in neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson (Habibi et al., 2011), Alzheimer (Kwok, 2010), ALS (Oates and Pamphlett, 2007), and multiple sclerosis (Burrell et al., 2011). On the role of epigenetic changes in pesticide-induced neurodegenerative disorder, recently neurotoxic insecticides were

Venetoclax datasheet found to promote apoptosis in dopaminergic neurons through hyper-acetylation of core histones H3 and H4 (Song et al., 2010). Epigenetic alterations have also been reported to be involved in some other late-onset diseases like diabetes (Simmons, 2007), aging (Gravina and Vijg, 2010), chronic kidney disease (Dwivedi et al., 2011), and atherosclerosis (Lund and Zaina, 2011). Nevertheless, presenting epigenetic modifications as a mechanism by which pesticides develop these chronic diseases depends on the future studies. However, epigenetics has

opened a new field for studying the influence of environmental exposures on transcriptional regulation of genes in association with human diseases. There are a lot of findings about changing the pattern of gene expressions in exposure to pesticides, which can be used as a tool in studying the process of human diseases (Pournourmohammadi and Abdollahi, 2011), but further studies are still required to determine the role of epigenetic mechanisms in these variations. At a cellular level, endocrine disruption refers Wortmannin manufacturer to a mechanism of toxicity that interferes the ability of the cells to communicate hormonally and results in a wide variety of adverse health effects including birth defects, reproductive, developmental, metabolic, immune, and neurobehavioral disorders as well as hormone dependent cancers. The term “endocrine disruptor” (ED) was first introduced in 1991 referring to the substances that interfere with synthesis, secretion, transport, binding, action, metabolism or elimination

of hormones in the body (Crisp et al., 1998). Up to now, a huge body of evidence has brought up on endocrine disrupting properties of pesticides so that currently a total of 101 pesticides have been listed as Resminostat proven or possible EDs by the Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN, 2009). Most endocrine disrupting pesticides mimic estrogen function by acting as a ligand for receptor, converting other steroids to active estrogen or increasing the expression of estrogen responsive genes as shown by some organochlorines, organophosphates, carbamates, and pyrethroids. Antiandrogenic effects have also been reported for organochlorine and carbamate insecticides, as well as triazines, a group of herbicides through inhibition of binding natural ligand to receptors and androgen binding receptors.