Prenatal exposure to multiple organochlorine compounds and childhood body mass index

Colicino, Elena; Margetaki, Katerina; Valvi, Damaskini, 1983-; Pedretti, Nicolo Foppa; Stratakis, Nikos; Vafeiadi, Marina, 1983-; Roumeliotaki, Theano; Kyrtopoulos, Sosterios A.; Kiviranta, Hannu; Stephanou, Euripides G.; Kogevinas, Manolis; McConnell, Rob; Berhane, Kiros T.; Chatzi, Leda; Conti, David V.

doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/EE9.0000000000000201

Prenatal exposure to multiple organochlorine compounds and childhood body mass index

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Colicino E, Margetaki K, Valvi D, Pedretti NF, Stratakis N, Vafeiadi M, Roumeliotaki T, Kyrtopoulos SA, Kiviranta H, Stephanou EG, Kogevinas M, McConnell R, Berhane KT, Chatzi L, Conti DV. Prenatal exposure to multiple organochlorine compounds and childhood body mass index. Environ Epidemiol. 2022 Apr 22;6(3):e201. DOI: 10.1097/EE9.0000000000000201

Abstract

Background: Prenatal exposure to organochlorine compounds (OCs) has been associated with increased childhood body mass index (BMI); however, only a few studies have focused on longitudinal BMI trajectories, and none of them used multiple exposure mixture approaches. Aim: To determine the association between in-utero exposure to eight OCs and childhood BMI measures (BMI and BMI z-score) at 4 years and their yearly change across 4-12 years of age in 279 Rhea child-mother dyads. Methods: We applied three approaches: (1) linear mixed-effect regressions (LMR) to associate individual compounds with BMI measures; (2) Bayesian weighted quantile sum regressions (BWQSR) to provide an overall OC mixture association with BMI measures; and (3)Bayesian varying coefficient kernel machine regressions (BVCKMR) to model nonlinear and nonadditive associations. Results: In the LMR, yearly change of BMI measures was consistently associated with a quartile increase in hexachlorobenzene (HCB) (estimate [95% Confidence or Credible interval] BMI: 0.10 [0.06, 0.14]; BMI z-score: 0.02 [0.01, 0.04]). BWQSR results showed that a quartile increase in mixture concentrations was associated with yearly increase of BMI measures (BMI: 0.10 [0.01, 0.18]; BMI z-score: 0.03 [0.003, 0.06]). In the BVCKMR, a quartile increase in dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene concentrations was associated with higher BMI measures at 4 years (BMI: 0.33 [0.24, 0.43]; BMI z-score: 0.19 [0.15, 0.24]); whereas a quartile increase in HCB and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB)-118 levels was positively associated with BMI measures yearly change (BMI: HCB:0.10 [0.07, 0.13], PCB-118:0.08 [0.04, 012]; BMI z-score: HCB:0.03 [0.02, 0.05], PCB-118:0.02 [0.002,04]). BVCKMR suggested that PCBs had nonlinear relationships with BMI measures, and HCB interacted with other compounds. Conclusions: All analyses consistently demonstrated detrimental associations between prenatal OC exposures and childhood BMI measures.