Effects of prenatal exposures to air sulfur dioxide/nitrogen dioxide on toddler neurodevelopment and effect modification by ambient temperature

Ting Yu; Leilei Zhou; Jian Xu; Haidong Kan; Renjie Chen; Shuwen Chen; Hui Hua; Zhiwei Liu; Chonghuai Yan

doi:10.1016/j.ecoenv.2021.113118

Effects of prenatal exposures to air sulfur dioxide/nitrogen dioxide on toddler neurodevelopment and effect modification by ambient temperature

Ecotoxicol Environ Saf. 2022 Jan 15:230:113118. doi: 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2021.113118. Epub 2021 Dec 31.

Authors

Ting Yu¹, Leilei Zhou², Jian Xu³, Haidong Kan⁴, Renjie Chen⁴, Shuwen Chen¹, Hui Hua¹, Zhiwei Liu¹, Chonghuai Yan²

Affiliations

¹ Shanghai Key Laboratory of Embryo Original Diseases, The International Peace Maternity & Child Health Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200030, China.
² MOE-Shanghai Key Laboratory of Children's Environmental Health, Department of Child and Adolescent Healthcare, Xinhua Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200092 China.
³ Shanghai Key Laboratory of Embryo Original Diseases, The International Peace Maternity & Child Health Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200030, China. Electronic address: sonia0616@sjtu.edu.cn.
⁴ School of Public Health, Key Laboratory of Public Health Safety of the Ministry of Education and Key Laboratory of Health Technology Assessment of the Ministry of Health, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032 China; Shanghai Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Particle Pollution and Prevention (LAP3), Fudan University, Shanghai 200032 China.

PMID: 34979314
DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2021.113118

Abstract

Emerging evidence suggests that prenatal exposure to ambient SO₂ or NO₂ induces fetal brain-damage. However, effects of prenatal exposure to SO₂ or NO₂ on toddler neurodevelopment and the effect-modification by ambient temperature remain unclear. Therefore, a prospective birth-cohort study was conducted from 2010 to 2012 in Shanghai, and 225 mother-child pairs were followed-up from mid-to-late pregnancy until 24-36 months postpartum. During the whole pregnancy, daily SO₂/NO₂ and temperature levels were obtained for each woman. Gesell-Development-Schedule was used to assess toddler neurodevelopment in the domains of gross-motor, fine-motor, adaptive-behavior, language and social-behavior. Distributed-lag-nonlinear-models simultaneously accounting for exposure-response and lag-response associations were applied to assess the impacts of prenatal SO₂/NO₂ exposure on neurodevelopment. Each 10-μg/m³ increase in weekly average SO₂ concentrations had adverse associations with gross-motor in gestational-weeks 1-6, with adaptive-behavior in weeks 26-30, and with language in weeks 30-36 (developmental-quotient changes: - 1.17% to - 0.12%, P-values < 0.05). Each 10-μg/m³ increase in weekly average NO₂ concentrations had adverse associations with gross-motor in gestational-weeks 33-36, with fine-motor in weeks 26-36 and with social-behavior in weeks 31-36 (developmental-quotient changes: - 0.91% to - 0.20%, P-values < 0.05). The cumulative effects for the whole pregnancy showed that each 10-μg/m³ increase in SO₂ induced significant deficits in gross-motor and adaptive-behavior (developmental-quotient changes: - 4.71% and - 4.06%, respectively, P < 0.05). We found prenatal cumulative SO₂ exposure induced more deficits in low temperature in language and adaptive-behavior than in high/moderate temperature. Thus, prenatal ambient SO₂/NO₂ exposure in specific time-windows (1st and 3rd trimesters for SO₂; 3rd trimester for NO₂) could impair toddler neurodevelopment and low temperature may aggravate the SO₂-induced neurotoxicity.

Keywords: Air pollution; Effect modification; Neurodevelopment; Prenatal exposure; Temperature; Toddler.