ToxSci Advance Access originally published online on June 25, 2008
Toxicological Sciences 2008 105(1):1-4; doi:10.1093/toxsci/kfn123
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society of Toxicology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
"Additional" Effects of Phthalate Mixtures on Fetal Testosterone Production
MRC Human Reproductive Sciences Unit, Centre for Reproductive Biology, The Queen's Medical Research Institute, 47 Little France Crescent, Edinburgh EH16 4TJ, UK
For correspondence via. Fax: 44-131-242-6231. E-mail: r.sharpe@hrsu.mrc.ac.uk.
Received June 17, 2008; accepted June 17, 2008
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
The difference between becoming a male rather than a female is about as fundamental as you can get, as it will alter that individual's place in society, transform the shape of his body, reshape his inherent abilities, his thought processes and his behaviors. Whilst it is a constant source of debate and amusement as to whether this "transformation" process represents an improvement or not, when compared with the "set-up" program which would have led to a female, it is becomingly increasingly clear that "making a male" is a rather perilous process. Major disorders of sexual differentiation in genetic males, such as intersex and sex reversal, are rare but milder disorders such as cryptorchidism and hypospadias, are amongst the commonest congenital disorders in humans, affecting 2–9% and 0.3–1% of boys at birth, respectively (Sharpe and Skakkebaek, 2008
). It is accepted that hormones, in particular androgens, play key roles in testis