Association between the pregnancy exposome and fetal growth
File(s)
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Background
Several environmental contaminants were shown to possibly influence fetal growth, generally from single exposure family studies, which are prone to publication bias and confounding by co-exposures. The exposome paradigm offers perspectives to avoid selective reporting of findings and to control for confounding by co-exposures. We aimed to characterize associations of fetal growth with the pregnancy chemical and external exposomes.
Methods
Within the Human Early-Life Exposome project, 131 prenatal exposures were assessed using biomarkers and environmental models in 1287 mother–child pairs from six European cohorts. We investigated their associations with fetal growth using a deletion-substitution-addition (DSA) algorithm considering all exposures simultaneously, and an exposome-wide association study (ExWAS) considering each exposure independently. We corrected for exposure measurement error and tested for exposure–exposure and sex–exposure interactions.
Results
The DSA model identified lead blood level, which was associated with a 97 g birth weight decrease for each doubling in lead concentration. No exposure passed the multiple testing-corrected significance threshold of ExWAS; without multiple testing correction, this model was in favour of negative associations of lead, fine particulate matter concentration and absorbance with birth weight, and of a positive sex-specific association of parabens with birth weight in boys. No two-way interaction between exposure variables was identified.
Conclusions
This first large-scale exposome study of fetal growth simultaneously considered >100 environmental exposures. Compared with single exposure studies, our approach allowed making all tests (usually reported in successive publications) explicit. Lead exposure is still a health concern in Europe and parabens health effects warrant further investigation.
Several environmental contaminants were shown to possibly influence fetal growth, generally from single exposure family studies, which are prone to publication bias and confounding by co-exposures. The exposome paradigm offers perspectives to avoid selective reporting of findings and to control for confounding by co-exposures. We aimed to characterize associations of fetal growth with the pregnancy chemical and external exposomes.
Methods
Within the Human Early-Life Exposome project, 131 prenatal exposures were assessed using biomarkers and environmental models in 1287 mother–child pairs from six European cohorts. We investigated their associations with fetal growth using a deletion-substitution-addition (DSA) algorithm considering all exposures simultaneously, and an exposome-wide association study (ExWAS) considering each exposure independently. We corrected for exposure measurement error and tested for exposure–exposure and sex–exposure interactions.
Results
The DSA model identified lead blood level, which was associated with a 97 g birth weight decrease for each doubling in lead concentration. No exposure passed the multiple testing-corrected significance threshold of ExWAS; without multiple testing correction, this model was in favour of negative associations of lead, fine particulate matter concentration and absorbance with birth weight, and of a positive sex-specific association of parabens with birth weight in boys. No two-way interaction between exposure variables was identified.
Conclusions
This first large-scale exposome study of fetal growth simultaneously considered >100 environmental exposures. Compared with single exposure studies, our approach allowed making all tests (usually reported in successive publications) explicit. Lead exposure is still a health concern in Europe and parabens health effects warrant further investigation.
Date Issued
2020-04-01
Date Acceptance
2020-01-13
Citation
International Journal of Epidemiology, 2020, 49 (2), pp.572-586
ISSN
0300-5771
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Start Page
572
End Page
586
Journal / Book Title
International Journal of Epidemiology
Volume
49
Issue
2
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2020; all rights reserved. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association. This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in International Journal of Epidemiology following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available online at: https://academic.oup.com/ije/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ije/dyaa017/5804959
Subjects
Biomarkers
chemical exposures
cohort
environment
exposome
fetal growth
mixtures
Epidemiology
0104 Statistics
1117 Public Health and Health Services
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2020-03-13