Abstract
BackgroundCell phone use during pregnancy is a public health concern. We investigated the association between maternal cell phone use in pregnancy and child’s language, communication and motor skills at 3 and 5 years.MethodsThis prospective study includes 45,389 mother-child pairs, participants of the MoBa, recruited at mid-pregnancy from 1999 to 2008. Maternal frequency of cell phone use in early pregnancy and child language, communication and motor skills at 3 and 5 years, were assessed by questionnaires. Logistic regression was used to estimate the associations.ResultsNo cell phone use in early pregnancy was reported by 9.8% of women, while 39%, 46.9% and 4.3% of the women were categorized as low, medium and high cell phone users. Children of cell phone user mothers had 17% (OR = 0.83, 95% CI: 0.77, 0.89) lower adjusted risk of having low sentence complexity at 3 years, compared to children of non-users. The risk was 13%, 22% and 29% lower by low, medium and high maternal cell phone use. Additionally, children of cell phone users had lower risk of low motor skills score at 3 years, compared to children of non-users, but this association was not found at 5 years. We found no association between maternal cell phone use and low communication skills.ConclusionsWe reported a decreased risk of low language and motor skills at three years in relation to prenatal cell phone use, which might be explained by enhanced maternal-child interaction among cell phone users. No evidence of adverse neurodevelopmental effects of prenatal cell phone use was reported.
Highlights
Cell phone use during pregnancy is a public health concern
Ten percent (9.8%, n = 4428) of women reported no use of cell phones in early pregnancy, 39% were categorized as low phone users and 4.3% as high users
We observed no difference by category of maternal cell phone use related to marital status, prepregnancy body mass index (BMI), smoking, alcohol consumption and folic acid supplements use during pregnancy, type of delivery, preterm birth, child gender and breastfeeding duration
Summary
Cell phone use during pregnancy is a public health concern. We investigated the association between maternal cell phone use in pregnancy and child’s language, communication and motor skills at 3 and 5 years. In a series of studies within the Danish National Birth Cohort, associations between maternal and child cell phone use and developmental milestones and behaviour of children were investigated [5,6,7]. Information on Papadopoulou et al BMC Public Health (2017) 17:685 maternal cell phone use was collected retrospectively when the child was 7 years old. These studies reported an increased odds ratio for problematic behaviour at 7 years of age related to cell phone use during pregnancy [5, 6]. In a Spanish birth cohort study researchers found no associattions between maternal cell phone use during pregnacy and child’s early mental development [9]. This is the only study in which child’s mental and psychomotoric development was assesed by phychologists, while the number of partcipants was lower than the Dutch and Danish studies
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
