Associations between sociodemographic characteristics and exposures to PBDEs, OH-PBDEs, PCBs, and PFASs in a diverse, overweight population of pregnant women

Abstract

Exposures to persistent organohalogen chemicals during pregnancy are associated with adverse health effects. Low-income, minority women with pre-existing co-morbidities may be particularly vulnerable to these exposures, but have historically been understudied. We aimed to characterize exposures to multiple chemical classes among a sample of ethnically diverse, lower income, overweight or obese pregnant women. Serum concentrations of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and their hydroxylated metabolites (OH-PBDEs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and poly-and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) were measured in 98 pregnant women (California; 2011-2013). Aggregate exposures were evaluated using correlational clustering, a "chemical burden" score, and PCA. Associations between sociodemographic characteristics and individual and aggregate exposures were evaluated using multivariable linear regression. Clustering and PCA both produced four groupings: (PC1) PBDEs/ OH-PBDEs, (PC2) PCBs, (PC3) PFNA/PFOA/PFDeA, (PC4) PFHxS/PFOS. Race/ethnicity and prepregnancy BMI were associated with PBDEs, OH-PBDEs and PC1. Maternal age was associated with PCBs and PC2. Parity was associated with PBDEs, OH-PBDEs and PC2. Poverty was negatively associated with PCBs, whereas food insecurity was positively associated with PFOS. We observed variations in sociodemographic profiles of exposures by chemical class and weak across-class correlations. These findings have implications for epidemiologic studies of chemical mixtures and for exposure reduction strategies.

Relationships of First Trimester Body Mass Index and Weight Change with Persistent Organic Pollutants Concentrations in Canadian Pregnant Women

“…As demonstrated by research studies of pregnant women from Denmark and Mexico [18,19], it is a POP with a low detection level. Studies from North America, where concentrations of PBDEs are known to be greater than in other parts of the world, have, however, found concentrations of various PBDE to increase with pre-pregnancy BMI and have suggested that PBDEs may have an obesogenic effect and accelerate the proliferation of adipose cells [25,35]. It can also be noted that, compared to PCBs, PBDEs represent a 'younger' class of POPs and could therefore have a different distribution in the body than PCBs.…”

“…Censored regressions are the preferred approach to analyze datasets with an important number of censored observations (i.e., low-level concentrations of POPs with values known to be between zero and the laboratory's LOD) [25]. Unadjusted and adjusted censored regression models were used to estimate beta (β) coe cients with corresponding 95% con dence intervals of the relationships between rst trimester BMI and lipid-adjusted POPs.…”

“…Several confounders were used to adjust for the relationship between the two explanatory variables and POP concentrations. The selection of confounders was based on a thorough review of variables considered in similar studies [15,23,25] and directed acyclic graphs [26]. We considered gestational age at the time of the rst MIREC visit (ranging between 6 and 13 weeks), parity (0, 1, 2, 3+), maternal age (<25, 25-29, 30-34, 35+ years), maternal education (high school or less, some college or college degree, undergraduate degree or higher), maternal smoking status (current (including women who quit smoking during pregnancy), former, never), and women's place of birth (Canada, other).…”

Using Latent Profile Analysis to Identify Associations Between Gestational Chemical Mixtures and Child Neurodevelopment

“…Another popular technique that has been used to study gestational mixtures is hierarchical clustering, a dimension reduction technique by which chemical exposures can be partitioned into groups. 6,64 For example, in 2020, Mehta et al 16 used hierarchical clustering and PCA to study associations between gestational exposure mixtures and sociodemographic variables. Like with latent profile analysis, this method does not require one to predetermine the number of groups; however, a key difference is that in this study, the researchers partitioned exposure variables, whereas we were interested in clustering the participants to find associations with chemical mixtures as a whole.…”

Bioinformatic analyses of hydroxylated polybrominated diphenyl ethers toxicities on impairment of adrenocortical secretory function

“…After PBDEs undergoing phase I metabolism, hydroxylated polybrominated diphenyl ethers (OH-PBDEs) metabolites formed in animals, which may cause more severe biological effects [ 23 ]. OH-PBDEs are new type of organic pollutant, and have gradually become a new hotspot for environmental research field [ 24 , 25 ]. Besides, the study indicated that 2-OH-BDE85 has stronger dose-dependent toxicity than 2-OH-BDE47 [ 26 ].…”