Occupational exposure to organic solvent mixtures during pregnancy and the risk of nonsyndromic oral clefts

Cécile Chevrier ^1*, Brigitte Dananché ², Michel Bahuau ³, Agnés Nelva ⁴, Christine Herman ⁵, Christine Francannet ⁶, Elisabeth Robert-Gnansia ⁴ and Sylvaine Cordier ¹

¹ Inserm, U625, Rennes, France
² Institut Universitaire de Médecine du Travail, Lyon, France
³ Service de Chirurgie Maxillofaciale, Service de Biochimie et Biologie Mol&culaire, Hopital Trousseau, France
⁴ Institut Européen des Génomutations, Lyon, France
⁵ CEMC Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France
⁶ Service de Génétique, Hotel Dieu, Clermont-Ferrand, France

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: cecile.chevrier{at}rennes.inserm.fr.

Accepted 20 April 2006

Abstract

Objectives: To examine the association between maternal occupational exposure to mixtures of organic solvents during pregnancy and the risk of nonsyndromic oral clefts. Methods: We conducted a case-control study (164 cleft lip with/without cleft palate (CL/P), 76 cleft palate (CP), 236 controls) in France to investigate the role of maternal occupational exposure to organic solvents at the beginning of pregnancy in the risk of nonsyndromic oral clefts. An expert chemist, guided by a detailed description of the women's occupational tasks, assessed exposure for each. Analysis of the findings used logistic regression. Results: In the control group, 39% of the women who reported working during pregnancy were exposed to at least one type of organic solvent. The risk of oral clefts was associated with oxygenated (for CL/P: odds-ratio (OR)=1.8, with 95% confidence interval (95%CI) 1.1 to 2.9; and for CP, OR=1.4, 95%CI 0.7 to 2.7), chlorinated (OR=9.4, 95%CI 2.5 to 35.3 and OR=3.8 95%CI 0.7 to 20.7), and petroleum (OR=3.6, 95%CI 1.5 to 8.8 and OR= 1.2, 95%CI 0.3 to 4.9) solvents. The risk of oral clefts increased linearly with level of exposure within the three subgroups of oxygenated solvents we considered (aliphatic alcohols, glycol ethers, and other oxygenated solvents, including esters, ketones and aliphatic aldehydes). Conclusions: These results suggest that maternal occupational exposure to organic solvents during pregnancy may play a role in the etiology of oral clefts. The limited number of subjects and the problem of multiple exposures require that these results be interpreted cautiously.

Keywords: cleft lip, cleft palate, maternal exposure, occupational exposure, solvents

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Garlantezec, R, Monfort, C, Rouget, F, Cordier, S (2009). Maternal occupational exposure to solvents and congenital malformations: a prospective study in the general population. Occup. Environ. Med. 66: 456-463 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Yang, J., Carmichael, S. L., Canfield, M., Song, J., Shaw, G. M., the National Birth Defects Prevention Study, (2008). Socioeconomic Status in Relation to Selected Birth Defects in a Large Multicentered US Case-Control Study. Am J Epidemiol 167: 145-154 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Palmer, K. (2006). Work in brief. Occup. Environ. Med. 63: 577-577 [Full Text]