Prenatal exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and cognition in early childhood

Bob Sun; Erin R Wallace; Yu Ni; Christine T Loftus; Adam Szpiro; Drew Day; Emily S Barrett; Ruby H N Nguyen; Kurunthachalam Kannan; Morgan Robinson; Nicole R Bush; Sheela Sathyanarayana; Alex Mason; Shanna H Swan; Leonardo Trasande; Catherine J Karr; Kaja Z LeWinn

doi:10.1016/j.envint.2023.108009

Prenatal exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and cognition in early childhood

Environ Int. 2023 Aug:178:108009. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2023.108009. Epub 2023 Jun 2.

Authors

Bob Sun¹, Erin R Wallace², Yu Ni³, Christine T Loftus³, Adam Szpiro⁴, Drew Day⁵, Emily S Barrett⁶, Ruby H N Nguyen⁷, Kurunthachalam Kannan⁸, Morgan Robinson⁸, Nicole R Bush⁹, Sheela Sathyanarayana¹⁰, Alex Mason¹¹, Shanna H Swan¹², Leonardo Trasande⁸, Catherine J Karr¹³, Kaja Z LeWinn¹⁴

Affiliations

¹ Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
² Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA. Electronic address: wallace8@uw.edu.
³ Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
⁴ Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
⁵ Seattle Children's Research Institute, Seattle, WA, USA.
⁶ Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute, School of Public Health, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, USA.
⁷ Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
⁸ Department of Pediatrics and Department of Environmental Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, USA.
⁹ Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA; Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA; Seattle Children's Research Institute, Seattle, WA, USA; Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
¹¹ Department of Preventive Medicine, University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center, Memphis, TN, USA.
¹² Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA.
¹³ Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA; Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA; Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
¹⁴ Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.

Abstract

Background: Epidemiological evidence for gestational polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) exposure and adverse child cognitive outcomes is mixed; little is known about critical windows of exposure.

Objective: We investigated associations between prenatal PAH exposure and child cognition in a large, multi-site study.

Methods: We included mother-child dyads from two pooled prospective pregnancy cohorts (CANDLE and TIDES, N = 1,223) in the ECHO-PATHWAYS Consortium. Seven urinary mono-hydroxylated PAH metabolites were measured in mid-pregnancy in both cohorts as well as early and late pregnancy in TIDES. Child intelligence quotient (IQ) was assessed between ages 4-6. Associations between individual PAH metabolites and IQ were estimated with multivariable linear regression. Interaction terms were used to examine effect modification by child sex and maternal obesity. We explored associations of PAH metabolite mixtures with IQ using weighted quantile sum regression. In TIDES, we averaged PAH metabolites over three periods of pregnancy and by pregnancy period to investigate associations between PAH metabolites and IQ.

Results: In the combined sample, PAH metabolites were not associated with IQ after full adjustment, nor did we observe associations with PAH mixtures. Tests of effect modification were null except for the association between 2-hydroxynaphthalene and IQ, which was negative in males (β_males = -0.67 [95%CI:-1.47,0.13]) and positive in females (β_females = 0.31 [95%CI:-0.52,1.13])(p_interaction = 0.04). In analyses across pregnancy (TIDES-only), inverse associations with IQ were observed for 2-hydroxyphenanthrene averaged across pregnancy (β = -1.28 [95%CI:-2.53,-0.03]) and in early pregnancy (β = -1.14 [95%CI:-2.00,-0.28]).

Significance: In this multi-cohort analysis, we observed limited evidence of adverse associations of early pregnancy PAHs with child IQ. Analyses in the pooled cohorts were null. However, results also indicated that utilizing more than one exposure measures across pregnancy could improve the ability to detect associations by identifying sensitive windows and improving the reliability of exposure measurement. More research with multiple timepoints of PAH assessment is warranted.

Keywords: Neurodevelopment; Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons; Prenatal.

Publication types

Multicenter Study
Research Support, N.I.H., Intramural
Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

Child, Preschool
Cognition
Female
Humans
Male
Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons* / toxicity
Pregnancy
Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects* / chemically induced
Prospective Studies
Reproducibility of Results

Substances

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Substances

Grants and funding