Abstract
Only a few epidemiological studies have focused on the correlation between prenatal exposure to polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and infant birth outcomes (IBO), and the results of these epidemiological studies are contradictory. The objective of this study was to assess the correlation between prenatal exposure to PBDEs (PEP) and IBO (i.e., birth weight) in an analysis of epidemiological studies and an experimental animals study. We searched databases of the medical literature (PubMed, Excerpta Medica Database, Cochrane Library, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure) for articles and pooled the results of the included epidemiological studies. In parallel, birth outcomes (i.e., birth weights of pups) were collected from female Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats exposed to decabromodiphenyl ether (DecaBDE) in the diet from five weeks of age to delivery. A significant negative relationship was found between human PBDE burden and birth weight in the analysis of seven epidemiological studies based on a random-effects model (β = −50.598; 95% confidence interval (CI) −95.914, −5.282; I2 = 11.8%; p = 0.029). In the experimental animal study, a significant decrease in birth weight in the DecaBDE-treated group was also observed (5.26 ± 0.39 vs. 5.8 ± 0.58, p = 0.0132). The results of our study contribute to increasing evidence suggesting that PEP adversely impacts IBO, especially birth weight.
Highlights
As additive flame retardants, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) have been added to a variety of consumer and commercial products, such as furniture, electrical equipment, textiles, household appliances, and other materials, for more than four decades worldwide
Nobetween statistically significantand associations found, we model observed a trend of negative associations each congener
We proposed that the relationship present in our meta-analysis may be consistent with that between decabromodiphenyl ether (DecaBDE) and infant birth outcomes (IBO)
Summary
As additive flame retardants, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) have been added to a variety of consumer and commercial products, such as furniture, electrical equipment, textiles, household appliances, and other materials, for more than four decades worldwide. PBDEs, which consist of 209 congeners, are likely to leach out of such products in dust during their lifetime [1,2]. Several studies [11,12] found that an increasing burden of PBDEs was negatively related to birth weight. No relationship between PBDE exposure and birth weight was found in other epidemiological studies [13,14,15]. These conflicting results were observed in experimental animal studies. One study performed by Du et al revealed that prenatal exposure to decabromodiphenyl ether
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