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Maternal stress modifies the effect of exposure to lead during pregnancy and 24-month old children's neurodevelopment.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Lead and psychosocial stress disrupt similar but not completely overlapping mechanisms. Exposure during the prenatal period to each of these insults singularly has been found to alter normal neurodevelopment; however, longitudinal associations with stress modifying the effect of lead have not been sufficiently analyzed in epidemiologic studies. OBJECTIVE:To evaluate prenatal stress as an effect modifier of gestational lead neurotoxicity. METHODS:We used a structural equations modeling approach with a trivariate response to evaluate cognitive, language and motor scores of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development-III in 24month-old children (n=360). Maternal blood lead levels were measured at the 2nd and 3rd trimester and psychosocial stress during pregnancy was assessed using a negative life events (NLE) scale derived from the CRYSIS questionnaire. RESULTS:3rd trimester lead (mean 3.9±3.0 SD?g/dL) and stress (median=3 NLE) were negatively associated with Bayley III scores. Using the model's results we generated profiles for 0, 2, 4 and 6 NLE across lead levels (up to 10?g/dL) and observed a dose-response for the developmental scores when lead levels were below 2?g/dL. Each NLE curve had a different shape across increasing lead levels. Higher stress (NLE=6) resulted in lower cognitive scores for both sexes, in lower language scores in girls but not boys. In the absence of stress we saw a negative association with lead for all scores, however for language and motor scores, higher stress seemed to mask this association. CONCLUSIONS:Our work examined and confirmed prenatal stress exposure as a modifier of the well-known neurotoxic effects of prenatal lead. It adds to the existing evidence pointing at the importance of studying the co-exposure of chemical and non-chemical exposures, specifically of considering the emotional environment of children at early developmental stages of life.

SUBMITTER: Tamayo Y Ortiz M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5221478 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Maternal stress modifies the effect of exposure to lead during pregnancy and 24-month old children's neurodevelopment.

Tamayo Y Ortiz Marcela M Téllez-Rojo Martha María MM Trejo-Valdivia Belem B Schnaas Lourdes L Osorio-Valencia Erika E Coull Brent B Bellinger David D Wright Rosalind J RJ Wright Robert O RO

Environment international 20161116

<h4>Background</h4>Lead and psychosocial stress disrupt similar but not completely overlapping mechanisms. Exposure during the prenatal period to each of these insults singularly has been found to alter normal neurodevelopment; however, longitudinal associations with stress modifying the effect of lead have not been sufficiently analyzed in epidemiologic studies.<h4>Objective</h4>To evaluate prenatal stress as an effect modifier of gestational lead neurotoxicity.<h4>Methods</h4>We used a structu ...[more]

PMID: 27865525

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Project description:Compared with the relatively well-investigated effects of childhood exposure to lead on neurocognitive deficits, those of prenatal exposure remain relatively inconclusive. We aimed to investigate the association between prenatal blood lead levels and neurodevelopmental delay during the first three years of life. From a prospective cohort of the Japan Environment and Children's Study, we analyzed a total of 80,759 children. The exposure factors were prenatal lead concentrations measured from maternal whole blood in the second/third trimesters and umbilical cord blood at birth. Neurodevelopment was assessed at 6, 12, 18, 24, 30, and 36 months old using a screening tool, the Ages and Stages Questionnaires, third edition (ASQ). The outcome measures were any suspected neurodevelopmental delay (sNDD) identified via the ASQ during the first (sNDD-1Y), second (sNDD-2Y), and third (sNDD-3Y) years of life. sNDD-1Y, 2Y, and 3Y were identified in 18.0%, 16.2%, and 17.2% of children, respectively. The geometric means of blood lead concentration in this study were much lower (0.62 μg/dL in maternal blood and 0.50 μg/dL in cord blood) than previously investigated levels. Multivariable regression models revealed that there were no associations between maternal blood lead and sNDD-1Y and 2Y and between cord blood lead and sNDD-1Y, 2Y, and 3Y. Although a higher maternal blood lead was associated with a reduced risk of sNDD-3Y (adjusted relative risk: 0.84, 95% confidence interval 0.75-0.94, per 1 increase in common logarithm of lead concentration), there were no dose-response relationships in the analysis using quintiles of lead concentrations. Using a large-scale data set, the present study demonstrated no convincing evidence for an inverse association between levels of prenatal blood lead and neurodevelopment in early childhood. Longitudinal measurements of prenatal and postnatal lead levels are needed to understand the relationship between lead exposure and neurocognitive development.

Project description:The developing fetus is especially vulnerable to environmental toxicants, including tobacco constituents. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure during pregnancy on child neurodevelopment within the first two years of life. The study population consisted of 461 non-smoking pregnant women (saliva cotinine level <10 ng/mL). Maternal passive smoking was assessed based on the cotinine level in saliva analyzed by the use of high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-ESI + MS/MS) and by questionnaire data. The cotinine cut-off value for passive smoking was established at 1.5 ng/mL (sensitivity 63%, specificity 71%). Psychomotor development was assessed in children at the age of one- and two-years using the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development. Approximately 30% of the women were exposed to ETS during pregnancy. The multivariate linear regression model indicated that ETS exposure in the 1st and the 2nd trimesters of pregnancy were associated with decreasing child language functions at the age of one (? = -3.0, p = 0.03, and ? = -4.1, p = 0.008, respectively), and two years (? = -3.8, p = 0.05, and ? = -6.3, p = 0.005, respectively). A negative association was found for cotinine level ?1.5 ng/mL in the 2nd trimester of pregnancy and child cognition at the age of 2 (? = -4.6, p = 0.05), as well as cotinine levels ?1.5 ng/mL in all trimesters of pregnancy and child motor abilities at two years of age (? = -3.9, p = 0.06, ? = -5.3, p = 0.02, and ? = -4.2, p = 0.05, for the 1st, the 2nd, and the 3rd trimester of pregnancy, respectively; for the 1st trimester the effect was of borderline statistical significance). This study confirmed that ETS exposure during pregnancy can have a negative impact on child psychomotor development within the first two years of life and underscore the importance of public health interventions aiming at reducing this exposure.

Dataset Information

Maternal stress modifies the effect of exposure to lead during pregnancy and 24-month old children's neurodevelopment.

Publications

Maternal stress modifies the effect of exposure to lead during pregnancy and 24-month old children's neurodevelopment.

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