Parental preconception and prenatal urinary bisphenol A and paraben concentrations and child behavior.

Epidemiologic studies suggest that prenatal urinary bisphenol A (BPA) concentrations are associated with childhood behavior problems, but there is limited research on prenatal paraben concentrations. In rodent offspring, preconception maternal BPA exposure caused behavioral problems and paraben exposure impacted sperm quality. However, the effects of parental preconception and prenatal BPA and paraben exposure on children's neurodevelopment are unknown. The Environment and Reproductive Health (EARTH) Study is a prospective cohort of couples from a fertility clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) quantified BPA, butylparaben, ethylparaben, methylparaben, and propylparaben concentrations in multiple urine samples collected before conception and during pregnancy. From the eligible parents (N = 220), we enrolled 158 children between 2 and 9 years of age. The parents completed the Behavior-Assessment-System-for-Children-2 (BASC-2). We estimated covariate-adjusted associations of average parental preconception and prenatal ln-transformed urinary BPA and sum of paraben concentrations (∑paraben) with BASC-2 scores using linear regression with generalized estimating equations. Median urinary BPA and Σparaben concentrations were 1.2 and 189 μg/L in mothers preconception and 1.7 and 25 μg/L in fathers preconception, respectively. Among all children, parental BPA and ∑paraben concentrations were not associated with BASC-2 behavioral symptoms index, internalizing, or externalizing problems scores. Point estimates ranged from -1.5 to 1.4 with wide 95% confidence intervals that included the null value. In this fertility clinic cohort, parental preconception and maternal prenatal BPA and paraben concentrations were not associated with problem behaviors among children. However, our small sample sizes reduced the precision of our results.

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Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of Environmental Epidemiology. All rights reserved.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Sponsorships or competing interests that may be relevant to content are disclosed at the end of the article. J.M.B. was financially compensated for serving as an expert witness for plaintiffs in litigation related to tobacco smoke exposures and served as a paid consultant to Quest Diagnostics. The other authors have no conflicts to report.