Unmasking Metabolism Saboteurs: What Makes Them Tick?

Metabolism-disrupting agents, or MDAs, can mess with your body's metabolism, raising the risk of metabolic disorders. These troublemakers can be chemicals, infections, or physical factors. Think of some antidepressants or nasty stuff like bisphenol A. To spot these hazards, scientists need a tidy way to combine data from various studies. Inspired by work on cancer-causing agents, experts have now listed 12 key characteristics that MDAs share. First, MDAs can mess with your pancreas, which controls blood sugar. They can also affect fat tissue and how your nervous system manages metabolism. Insulin resistance, a big no-no for metabolism, is another red flag. MDAs can also jumble up signals that control metabolism, mess with cells that handle metabolic tasks, and upset the balance of energy in the body.Moreover, these sneaky agents can cause nutrients to be handled wrongly, spark chronic inflammation, and mess with the immune system in metabolic tissues. They can also disrupt the gut, trigger stress in cells, and throw off your body's internal clock. This Consensus Statement explains how these key characteristics were discovered and shows evidence backing them up. It also uses examples of different agents to show how the characteristics can help identify MDAs.