Silicone Toxicity = Breast Implant Illness

Is silicone inert? Could it be making women with implants sick?

It has been shown that silicone leakage, also known as gel bleed, occurs in 99% of women with silicone breast implants (SBI) and 87% of these women had silicone particles beyond the breast tissue (Dijkman et al. 2021). Gel bleed may lead to Breast Implant Illness (BII), also known as silicone toxicity (Brawer 2019; Wee et al. 2020) as well as Breast Implant-Associated Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma (BIA-ALCL) and squamous epithelial carcinoma/lymphoma (Deva et al. 2020; Fleury and D’Alessandro 2021). To date the literature concerning BII is descriptive and observational, however many women are actively removing their breasts to reduce implant-associated illnesses (Brawer 2017; Habib et al. 2022; Spit et al. 2022; Wee et al. 2020). Despite the increased awareness of silicone toxicity and BII, there are very few scientific papers that address the toxic effects as a consequence of gel bleed in people with SBIs. Due to the challenges associated with exploring the effect of gel bleed from implants, it would be ideal to explore the effects in a whole-organism model. Therefore, we mimicked gel bleed and explored the toxic effect in a relevant model system, the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans .

You can read Professor Dijkman's most recent paper published in March 2023

Exposure to silicone breast implant-infused media is detrimental to Caenorhabditis elegans

on silicone toxicity here or click the image: