| Summary: | 博士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 職業醫學與工業衛生研究所 === 102 === Background and Objectives: Perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) are persistent organic pollutants and wildly distributed in the environment. Previous animal studies have shown that in-utero PFCs exposure have adverse impacts on birth outcomes, growth and neurodevelopment. However, these health effects in humans are still unclear. The aim of the study was to explore the impact of prenatal exposure to PFCs on child growth and development.
Methods: The study population was 486 mother-infant pairs who gave births in Taiwan between April 2004 and January 2005 from Taiwan Birth Panel Study. We interviewed them by a structured questionnaire before delivery, collected umbilical cord blood at birth and extracted birth outcomes from medical records. The children were followed by using the Developmental Inventory for Infants and Toddlers (CDIIT) at two years of age. Growth data were collected from records in Child Healthcare Handbooks until 7.5 years of age. PFCs in umbilical cord blood were analyzed by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry. The limits of quantitation for four commonly detectable PFCs, namely perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorooctyl sulfonate (PFOS), perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA), and perfluoroundecanoic acid (PFUA) were 1.58, 0.22, 0.84, and 3.1 ng/mL, respectively.
Results: The first part had shown that PFOS levels in cord blood plasma are negatively associated with gestational age, birth weight, head circumference, preterm birth, and small for gestational age. A dose-response relation was observed while classifying the PFOS levels into quartiles. However, we did not find a convincing association between birth outcomes and prenatal exposure to PFOA, PFNA or PFUA. The second part had shown that PFOS levels in cord blood plasma were adversely associated with developmental quotients (DQs) of the whole test, gross-motor, fine-motor, and self-help domains of the CDIIT at two years of age. The impact was most apparent for the gross-motor subdomain, and demonstrated a dose-dependent relationship. The third part had shown that higher prenatal PFOS exposure was associated with lower body weight and length at birth, the effect diminished as children grow up.
Conclusions: Our study had shown that prenatal PFOS exposures are associated with adverse fetal growth, including shortened gestational age and lower birth weight. Those children with higher prenatal PFOS exposure had poorer performance on their gross motor developments at 2 years of age. The adverse effect of in utero PFOS exposure on weight decreased as children grow up.
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