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ARS Home » Plains Area » Fargo, North Dakota » Edward T. Schafer Agricultural Research Center » Animal Metabolism-Agricultural Chemicals Research » Research » Research Project #425470

Research Project: Determination of Ractopamine and Zilpaterol Levels in Human Subjects to Correlate Nutritional Intake Data for Risk Assessments in Cancer Onset

Location: Animal Metabolism-Agricultural Chemicals Research

Project Number: 3060-32420-001-003-N
Project Type: Non-Funded Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Jun 1, 2014
End Date: May 31, 2019

Objective:
To determine ractopamine and zilpaterol concentrations in urine and correlate the data with dietary information and perform risk assessments in early stage breast cancer or lung cancer patients.

Approach:
Ractopamine is a beta-agonist repartitioning agent that has been used as a growth promoter in hogs for about 15 years, it has subsequently been approved for use in cattle and turkeys. Zilpaterol, another beta-agonist leanness agent, has been approved as growth promoter for cattle. Information on long-term exposure to ractopamine and/or zilpaterol through meat consumption and their effects to human health outcome is needed. This study will measure ractopamine and/or zilpaterol urine concentrations in human subjects from early stage breast cancer, lung cancer patients, and healthy participants. The chemical analysis will be carried out using high performance liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry or other suitable techniques to achieve high specificity and sensitivity. The results will be correlated with dietary information particularly with meat intake where ractopamine or zilpaterol might have been present. Variants or co-variants of ractopamine or zilpaterol exposures will be used for risk assessments for these two cancer types (breast cancer or lung cancer).