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National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

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Your Environment. Your Health.

Publication Detail

Title: Relationship of bone and blood lead levels to psychiatric symptoms: the normative aging study.

Authors: Rhodes, Daniel; Spiro 3rd, Avron; Aro, Antonio; Hu, Howard

Published In J Occup Environ Med, (2003 Nov)

Abstract: Blood and bone lead levels were used to investigate lead's potential effect on psychiatric symptoms among middle-aged to elderly men from the Normative Aging Study. Symptoms were assessed using the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) and analyzed as individual outcomes as well as a measure that combined anxiety, depression, and phobic anxiety. Blood and bone lead averaged 6.3 microg/dL (standard deviation [SD] = 4.16), 21.9 microg/g (SD = 13.5), and 32.1 microg/g (SD = 19.8) for blood, tibia, and patella lead, respectively. In logistic regression models that adjusted for age, alcohol intake, employment status, and education status, we found that patella bone lead was significantly associated with an increased risk of phobic anxiety and the combined outcome measure at the P </= 0.05 level. Tibia and blood lead had similar associations. We conclude that cumulative lead exposure, which bone lead levels reflect, could be a risk factor for psychiatric symptoms even at modest levels of exposure.

PubMed ID: 14610395 Exiting the NIEHS site

MeSH Terms: No MeSH terms associated with this publication

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