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OP V – 2 Prenatal fluoride exposure and neurobehavior among children 1–3 years of age in mexico
  1. Deena Thomas1,
  2. Brisa Sanchez2,
  3. Karen Peterson3,
  4. Niladri Basu4,
  5. E Angeles Martinez-Mier5,
  6. Adriana Mercado-Garcia6,
  7. Mauricio Hernandez-Avila6,
  8. Christine Till7,
  9. Morteza Bashash8,
  10. Howard Hu8,
  11. Martha M Tellez-Rojo6
  1. 1University of Michigan, Department of Internal Medicine, Ann Arbour, Michigan, USA
  2. 2University of Michigan, Department of Biostatistics, Ann Arbour, USA
  3. 3University of Michigan, Department of Nutritional Sciences, Ann Arbour, USA
  4. 4McGill University, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Canada
  5. 5Indiana University, Department of Cariology, Operative Dentistry and Dental Public Health, Indianapolis, USA
  6. 6Instituto Nacional de Salud Publica, Centro de Investigacion en Salud Poblacional, Cuernavaca, Mexico
  7. 7York University, Department of Psychology, Toronto, Canada
  8. 8University of Toronto, Occupational and Environmental Health, Toronto, Canada

Abstract

Background/aim Recent studies report an inverse association between fluoride (F) exposure and IQ in children, but few included individual measures of exposure or assessed associations with prenatal exposure using a prospective study design.

Methods This study utilised the Early Life Exposures in Mexico to Environmental Toxicants (ELEMENT) birth cohort and archived pregnancy samples to study prenatal F exposure and its association with subsequent child neurobehavioral outcomes at ages 1, 2 and 3 years. A Generalised Mixed Model (GMM) was used to model the association between mean creatinine-adjusted urinary F (MUFcr), averaged over three trimesters, and Mental Development Index (MDI), a subscale of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development-II (BSID-II) test, among 401 mother-infant pairs. The analysis controlled for maternal age, education, marital status, ELEMENT cohort, child’s sex, and child’s age.

Results The median MUFcr was 0.835 mg/L (minimum: 0.195, maximum: 3.673). MUFcr was significantly inversely associated with offspring MDI scores, with an increase in MUFcr of 0.5 mg/L (roughly the interquartile range value) corresponding to a decrease in MDI of −1.20 points (95% CI: −2.19,–0.20).

Conclusion Our findings add to our team’s recently published report on prenatal fluoride and cognition at ages 4 and 6–12 years by suggesting that higher in utero exposure to F has an adverse impact on offspring cognitive development that can be detected earlier, in the first three years of life.

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