Prenatal triclosan exposure and neurodevelopment at 2 years of age in Shandong, China

Abstract

Background Triclosan (TCS) has been widely detected in pregnant women. Limited epidemiological studies suggest that prenatal exposure to TCS may interfere with the neurodevelopment of school-age children. However, there is a lack of evidence for effects on children in early childhood, especially in China. Methods Based on Laizhou Wan Birth Cohort in Shandong, China, TCS concentrations were measured in urine among 489 pregnant women during their hospital admission for delivery. Neurodevelopment of their children was assessed using the Gesell Development Schedules (adopted by the Chinese Pediatric Association and widely used for assessing early child development in China, including gross motor, fine motor, adaptive, language, and social domains) at 2 years of age (n=294). Linear regression and generalized linear models were used to analyze the association between prenatal TCS exposure and the toddlers’ developmental quotient scores (DQs).Results The median of maternal TCS concentrations was 0.24μg/L and 0.67μg/g creatinine. Although no association was found between prenatal TCS exposure and DQs in the five domains, adverse associations were detected after gender stratification. We found an inverse association between prenatal TCS concentrations and DQs in the language domain among boys. Specifically, for every 10-fold increase in TCS concentrations, DQs decreased by 2.13 points (β= -2.13; 95% CI: -4.06 to -0.19, p=0.03). Besides, prenatal TCS concentrations were adversely associated with DQs in the adaptive domain among boys (p-trend=0.01) and DQs in the gross motor domain among girls (p-trend=0.03) by the trend across TCS quartiles. Conclusions Based on a Chinese population, our findings suggest that prenatal TCS exposure might have adverse effects on neurodevelopment at the age of 2 in a gender-dependent manner. Further studies to replicate our findings are needed and further investigations are required to examine the potential mechanisms underlying the association between early-life TCS exposure and neurodevelopment in early childhood.