Meconium Exposure to Phthalates, Sex and Thyroid Hormones, Birth Size and Pregnancy Outcomes in 251 Mother–Infant Pairs from Shanghai

Abstract

Phthalates are hormonally active pollutants. In-utero exposure to phthalates has been reported to be associated with birth size parameters and pregnancy outcomes. However, previous reports were inconsistent. We examined the associations between meconium exposure to phthalates and the effects on birth size parameters, pregnancy outcomes and sex and thyroid hormones in 251 mother–infant pairs from a Shanghai hospital. We measured 10 metabolites of phthalates in meconium samples collected during the first 24h after delivery. Information on seven birth size parameters (birth weight, birth length, abdominal circumference, head circumference, femur length, biparietal diameter and anogenital distance) and three pregnancy outcomes (gestational diabetes, premature rupture of membrane, and premature birth) was available from the birth record. Concentrations of free testosterone, estradiol (E2), thyroid stimulating hormone, concentrations of total and free thyroxine and triiodothyronine were measured from cord blood. Multivariate linear regression and logistic regression were used to estimate associations between phthalate exposure and health outcomes. mono-iso-butylphthalate (MiBP), mono-n-butylphthalate (MnBP) and mono-2-ethyl-5-oxohexyl phthalate (MEOHP) were positively associated with birth length and femur length which seemed more obvious in female newborn; MiBP, MnBP and mono-2-ethylhexylphthalate (MEHP) were positively associated with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) only in mothers with male newborns; monomethyl phthalate (MMP), MiBP and MEOHP were positively associated with E2 in male newborns. This study indicates that meconium exposure to phthalates may adversely affect some fetal growth parameters and GDM with a potential gender effect.

Exposure Characteristics of Phthalate Metabolites Among The Zunyi Cohort of Pregnant Women in Southwest China

“…Indeed, higher levels of the LMW phthalate metabolites (i.e., MMP, MEP, MiBP, MBP, and ΣLMW) were measured in of our study in participants recruited during the summer. Similar results were obtained for pregnant women, young children and general population in China(Guo et al, 2020;Yang et al, 2021). The reasons for the observed seasonal effects on metabolite concentrations remain unclear.…”

“…Several studies in United States (Messerlian et al, 2016) and China (Mu et al, 2015; have reached the same conclusion. Additionally, maternal exposure to phthalates can increase the odds of preterm birth (Ferguson et al, 2019;Broe et al, 2019;Gao et al, 2019), and it is related to fetal birth size (Guo et al, 2020;Polańska et al, 2016;De et al, 2015). Moreover, maternal exposure to phthalates was observed to lead to gestational hypertension and gestational diabetes mellitus (Werner et al, 2015;James-Todd et al, 2016).…”

Environmental health influences in pregnancy and risk of gestational diabetes mellitus: a systematic review

“…An animal model study performed on rats (n = 24) showed significant positive associations for the progression of GDM through Di-n-butyl phthalate (p > 0.05 [45]). Consistent with this, 3 of 5 human studies observed positive associations between certain phthalates (monoiso-butylphthalate, mono-n-butylphthalate, mono-2ethyl-5-oxohexyl phthalate (p < 0.05) [46], monoethyl phthalate (95% CI:1.61 (1.10, 2.36) [47], mono-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (p = 0.019) [48]) and GDM. Two cohort studies by Shapiro e al.…”

“…In this systematic review, the current evidence assessing environmental risk factors and GDM has been analyzed. Whilst we found clear evidence for an association between GDM and air pollution [29,[96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107], ambient temperature [31,[92][93][94][95], season [32,[85][86][87][88], cadmium [36,[80][81][82], arsenic [37,[70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77], POPs [55, 57-60, 62-64, 66, 67] and phthalates [45][46][47][48], the findings regarding phenols were rather heterogeneous. The results for adverse glycemic outcomes also showed clear associations regarding air pollution [98-100, 105, 107, 118-121], ambient temperature [92,94], season [32,85,…”

Prenatal Phthalates Exposure and Cord Thyroid Hormones: A Birth Cohort Study in Southern Taiwan

“…In addition, animal and epidemiological studies have reported that phthalate metabolites can penetrate the placenta and be retained in the fetus [ 14 , 30 , 31 , 32 ]. Biomarkers of phthalates in different specimens were used to assess the exposure of early life in the uterus, such as meocoin, serum, and amniotic fluid samples [ 14 , 21 , 33 ].…”