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Prenatal Pesticide Exposure and 1-year-old Children’s Neurodevelopment in the Infants’ Environmental Health (ISA) Birth Cohort

Fri, March 24, 8:30 to 9:15am, Salt Palace Convention Center, Floor: 2, Meeting Room 258

Abstract

Due to the generalized use of pesticides around the world, especially in agricultural areas, people are being exposed to these substances in both their home and work environment (Mora et al., 2020). As many pesticides can cross the placenta and the blood-brain barrier, the effect of prenatal pesticide exposure on children’s neurodevelopment is of concern, particularly because of temporal mechanisms of susceptibility of the neurosystem during pregnancy and early life (Watkins et al., 2016). In the present study, we evaluated associations between prenatal pesticide exposures and neurodevelopmental outcomes among 1-year-old children from a birth cohort study (n=355).
To determine prenatal pesticide exposure, we measured maternal specific-gravity corrected urinary biomarker concentrations (µg/L) of pyrimethanil and 2,4-D, one to three times during pregnancy with a two-dimensional liquid chromatography mass-spectrometer. One-year post-partum, we evaluated children’s neurodevelopment with the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development 3rd edition (BSID-III). We evaluated associations between exposures and neurodevelopmental outcomes using both scaled and z-scores (mean=0, SD=1) by separate linear regression models. We adjusted these models for potential confounders (i.e., maternal education, parity, sex, gestational age at birth, child age, HOME-score, location of assessment, manganese hair and blood concentrations, and urinary ethylene thiourea) and, to explore sex-specific associations, also included ‘child's sex*pesticide metabolite’ as an interaction term in the models. In addition, we ran the models stratified by sex. Finally, we explored non-linear exposure-outcome associations with general additive models.
Most of the women were born in Costa Rica (84%), married/living as married (74%), multiparous (66%), and frequently reported gestational anemia during the pregnancy of the participating child (41%). A substantial part of the mother-infant pairs lived below poverty line (66%), and had low (28%), or very low (10%), food security status. About a quarter of the women reported high levels of depressive symptoms (CES-D scale, ≥24 points).
We found higher prenatal urinary 2,4-D was associated with decreased receptive language development among all children (b= -.24, CI= -.47, -.01, R2adj=.34). Prenatal exposure to 2,4-D was also associated with lower expressive language abilities among boys (b= -.26, CI= -.55, .02, R2adj=.45), but not girls (b= -.19, CI= -.48, .11, R2adj=.11). Pyrimethanil was weakly associated with lower receptive language abilities among girls (b = -0.15, CI = -.33, 0.03, R2adj=.40), but not boys (b = 0.05, CI = -.11, 0.22, R2adj=.24). Results were similar for scaled scores. We did not find evidence for non-linear associations of prenatal pesticide exposure and neurodevelopmental outcomes.
Our results showed prenatal exposure to common-use pesticides may affect children’s neurodevelopment at 1-year of age, some of the associations differed by sex. These results will be discussed considering recent findings on the development of receptive language in children, and what biological mechanisms might explain our findings. Finally, within the context of our findings, we will also discuss the effect of socio-demographic and economic variables on neurodevelopment, such as poverty, maternal level of education, maternal mental health, food security and immigration.

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