Maternal dietary intake of fish and child neurodevelopment at 3 years: a nationwide birth cohort-The Japan Environment and Children's Study

Mariko Inoue; Kenta Matsumura; Kei Hamazaki; Akiko Tsuchida; Hidekuni Inadera

doi:10.3389/fpubh.2023.1267088

Maternal dietary intake of fish and child neurodevelopment at 3 years: a nationwide birth cohort-The Japan Environment and Children's Study

Front Public Health. 2024 Jan 24:11:1267088. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1267088. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Mariko Inoue¹, Kenta Matsumura^{1

2}, Kei Hamazaki^{1

2

3}, Akiko Tsuchida^{1

2}, Hidekuni Inadera^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toyama, Toyama, Japan.
² Toyama Regional Center for JECS Study, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toyama, Toyama, Japan.
³ Department of Public Health, Gunma University Graduate School of Medicine, Maebashi, Japan.

Abstract

Background: Results on the association between fish intake during pregnancy and a reduction in neurodevelopmental delays in children have been inconsistent, with some reports finding an association and others finding none. Because neurodevelopmental delays are more pronounced at the age of 3 years, their association needs to be examined at this age.

Methods: After exclusion and multiple imputation from a dataset comprising 104,057 records from the Japan Environment and Children's Study, logistic regression analysis was conducted in quintiles to evaluate the association between maternal fish intake during pregnancy and child neurodevelopment at age 3 years in 91,909 mother-child pairs. The Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ), validated in the Japan Public Health Center-Based Prospective Study for the Next Generation, was used to assess maternal fish intake during pregnancy. The Ages and Stages Questionnaires-3 was used to assess children's neurodevelopment in five domains: communication, gross motor, fine motor, problem-solving, and personal-social.

Results: Consistently lower odds were found for the highest vs. lowest quintile for the domains of communication, fine motor, problem-solving, and personal-social but not gross motor skills, with adjusted odd ratios (95% confidence intervals) of 0.89 (0.80-0.998), 0.90 (0.83-0.97), 0.86 (0.80-0.94), 0.87 (0.77-0.98), and 1.04 (0.94-1.16), respectively. The trend for lower odds of symptoms of neurodevelopmental delays across quintiles of higher maternal fish intake were significant for fine motor, problem-solving, and personal-social but not communication or gross motor.

Conclusions: Fish consumption during pregnancy may be associated with a reduced risk of neurodevelopmental delay in 3-year-olds, particularly in the fine motor, problem-solving, and personal-social domains. Continued investigation after the age of 3 could further clarify the association.

Keywords: fish; food life; infant; neurodevelopment; pregnancy.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Animals
Birth Cohort*
Child Development*
Child, Preschool
Eating
Female
Fishes
Humans
Japan / epidemiology
Pregnancy
Prospective Studies

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The JECS was founded by the Ministry of the Environment, Japan. The funding source played no role in the study's design, collection, analysis, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; or in the decision to submit this paper for publication.