Early Pregnancy Exposure to Rare Earth Elements and Risk of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus: A Nested Case-Control Study

Abstract

Objective: The extensive use of rare earth elements (REEs) in many technologies was found to have effects on human health, but the association between early pregnancy exposure to REEs and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is still unknown.

Methods: This nested case-control study involved 200 pregnant women with GDM and 200 healthy pregnant women from the Peking University Birth Cohort in Tongzhou. We examined the serum concentrations of 14 REEs during early pregnancy and analyzed their associations with the risk of GDM.

Results: When the elements were considered individually in the logistic regression model, no significant associations were found between REEs and GDM, after adjusting for confounding variables (P > 0.05). In weighted quantile sum (WQS) regression, each quartile decrease in the mixture index for REEs resulted in a 1.67-fold (95% CI: 1.12-2.49) increased risk of GDM. Neodymium (Nd), Praseodymium (Pr), and Lanthanum (La) were the most important contributors in the mixture.

Conclusion: The study findings indicated that early pregnancy exposure to lower levels of REE mixture was associated with an increased risk of GDM, and Nd, Pr, and La exhibited the strongest effects in the mixture.

Keywords: early pregnancy; gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM); rare earth elements (REEs); serum; weighted quantile sum (WQS).