The activity of bisphenol A depends on both the estrogen receptor subtype and the cell type.

Bisphenol A (BPA), a monomer of plastic used in consumer products, is abundant in the environment and enters the body by ingestion or adsorption. In order to characterize the estrogenic effect of BPA, we performed luciferase assay on three independent cell lines derived from different tissues transfected with either human ERalpha cDNA or ERbeta cDNA. The estrogenic activities of BPA were detectable in all cell lines via both ERalpha and ERbeta. In 293T cells and Hec-1 cells, the estrogenic activities were significantly decreased when cells expressing ERalpha were incubated with 10(-6) M BPA in the presence of 10(-8) M 17beta-estradiol (E2) while the activities via ERbeta were essentially unchanged in the same conditions. Interestingly, no reduction of estrogenic activity was detected in HOS-TE85 cells via either ERalpha or ERbeta. Our results indicate that BPA only acts as an agonist of estrogen via ERbeta whereas it has dual actions as an agonist and antagonist in some types of cells via ERalpha. Thus, the activity of BPA may depend on the ER subtype and the tissue involved.