Exploring the relationship between metal exposure, BDNF, and behavior in adolescent males
This research would not have been achieved without the selfless collaboration of the INMA-Granada adolescents and families who took part in the study. The authors also acknowledge the Human Genotyping Laboratory at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center, CeGen-PRB3, which is supported by grant no. PT17/0019, of the PE I+D+i 2013-2016, funded by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII) and ERDF. They thank the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program HBM4EU for financial support under Grant Agree-ment No. 733032. The study was also supported by the ISCIII with grant no. CP16/00085. The authors also acknowledge the funding received from the University of Granada for the open access publishing costs and the support of the Biomedical Research Networking Center-CIBER de Epidemiologia y Salud Publica (CIBERESP) , and the ISCIII (FIS 17/01526, FIS-PI16/01820 and FIS-PI16/01858) . Vicente Mustieles and Shereen Cynthia D'Cruz were under contract with the HBM4EU project. A. Rodriguez-Carrillo received a predoctoral fellowship (FPU 16/03011) from the Spanish Ministry of Education and C. Freire (grant no. MS16/00085) received a grant under the Miguel Servet Type I program of the ISCIII "Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional" (ISCIII/FEDER) . This article forms part of the doctoral thesis developed by Andrea Rodriguez-Carrillo in the context of the "Clinical Medicine and Public Health Program" of the University of Granada (Spain) . ; Background: Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) plays an important role in brain development by regulating multiple pathways within the central nervous system. In the Human Biomonitoring for Europe Project (HBM4EU), this neurotrophin is being implemented as a novel effect biomarker to evaluate the potential threats of environmental chemicals on neurodevelopment. Objectives: To explore the relationships among exposure to environmental metals, BDNF biomarkers at two levels of biological complexity, and behavioral function in adolescent males. Methods: Data were ...