Prenatal and childhood exposure to organophosphate pesticides and functional brain imaging in young adults

Sharon K Sagiv; Joseph M Baker; Stephen Rauch; Yuanyuan Gao; Robert B Gunier; Ana M Mora; Katherine Kogut; Asa Bradman; Brenda Eskenazi; Allan L Reiss

doi:10.1016/j.envres.2023.117756

Prenatal and childhood exposure to organophosphate pesticides and functional brain imaging in young adults

Environ Res. 2024 Feb 1:242:117756. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2023.117756. Epub 2023 Nov 26.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Center for Environmental Research and Community Health (CERCH), School of Public Health, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA. Electronic address: sagiv@berkeley.edu.
² Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, School of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
³ Center for Environmental Research and Community Health (CERCH), School of Public Health, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁴ Center for Environmental Research and Community Health (CERCH), School of Public Health, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA; Department of Public Health, University of California, Merced, CA, USA.
⁵ Center for Environmental Research and Community Health (CERCH), School of Public Health, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA. Electronic address: eskenazi@berkeley.edu.
⁶ Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, School of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA; Department of Radiology, School of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA; Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. Electronic address: areiss1@stanford.edu.

PMID: 38016496
DOI: 10.1016/j.envres.2023.117756

Abstract

Background: Early life exposure to organophosphate (OP) pesticides has been linked with poorer neurodevelopment from infancy to adolescence. In our Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS) birth cohort, we previously reported that residential proximity to OP use during pregnancy was associated with altered cortical activation using functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in a small subset (n = 95) of participants at age 16 years.

Methods: We administered fNIRS to 291 CHAMACOS young adults at the 18-year visit. Using covariate-adjusted regression models, we estimated associations of prenatal and childhood urinary dialkylphosphates (DAPs), non-specific OP metabolites, with cortical activation in the frontal, temporal, and parietal regions of the brain during tasks of executive function and semantic language.

Results: There were some suggestive associations for prenatal DAPs with altered activation patterns in both the inferior frontal and inferior parietal lobes of the left hemisphere during a task of cognitive flexibility (β per ten-fold increase in DAPs = 3.37; 95% CI: -0.02, 6.77 and β = 3.43; 95% CI: 0.64, 6.22, respectively) and the inferior and superior frontal pole/dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of the right hemisphere during the letter retrieval working memory task (β = -3.10; 95% CI: -6.43, 0.22 and β = -3.67; 95% CI: -7.94, 0.59, respectively). We did not observe alterations in cortical activation with prenatal DAPs during a semantic language task or with childhood DAPs during any task.

Discussion: We observed associations of prenatal OP concentrations with mild alterations in cortical activation during tasks of executive function. Associations with childhood exposure were null. This is reasonably consistent with studies of prenatal OPs and neuropsychological measures of attention and executive function found in CHAMACOS and other birth cohorts.

Keywords: Dialkyl phosphates; Neurodevelopment; Neuroimaging; Organophosphates; Prenatal; fNIRS.

MeSH terms

Adolescent
Brain / diagnostic imaging
Child
Female
Functional Neuroimaging
Humans
Insecticides*
Maternal Exposure / adverse effects
Organophosphates / toxicity
Organophosphates / urine
Organophosphorus Compounds / toxicity
Pesticides* / toxicity
Pesticides* / urine
Pregnancy
Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects* / chemically induced

Substances

Insecticides
Organophosphates
Organophosphorus Compounds
Pesticides