Title: Association between the pregnancy exposome and fetal growth.

Authors: Agier, Lydiane; Basagaña, Xavier; Hernandez-Ferrer, Carles; Maitre, Léa; Tamayo Uria, Ibon; Urquiza, Jose; Andrusaityte, Sandra; Casas, Maribel; de Castro, Montserrat; Cequier, Enrique; Chatzi, Leda; Donaire-Gonzalez, David; Giorgis-Allemand, Lise; Gonzalez, Juan R; Grazuleviciene, Regina; Gützkow, Kristine B; Haug, Line S; Sakhi, Amrit K; McEachan, Rosemary R C; Meltzer, Helle M; Nieuwenhuijsen, Mark; Robinson, Oliver; Roumeliotaki, Theano; Sunyer, Jordi; Thomsen, Cathrine; Vafeiadi, Marina; Valentin, Antonia; West, Jane; Wright, John; Siroux, Valérie; Vrijheid, Martine; Slama, Rémy

Published In Int J Epidemiol, (2020 04 01)

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.

PubMed ID: 32167557

MeSH Terms: No MeSH terms associated with this publication