Maternal exposure to urinary polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) in pregnancy and childhood asthma in a pooled multi-cohort study
Christine T. Loftus, Adam A. Szpiro, Tomomi Workman, Erin R. Wallace, Marnie F. Hazlehurst, Drew B. Day, Yu Ni, Kecia N. Carroll, Margaret A. Adgent, Paul E. Moore, Emily S. Barrett, Ruby H.N. Nguyen, Kurunthachalam Kannan, Morgan Robinson, Erin E. Masterson, Frances A. Tylavsky, Nicole R. Bush, Kaja Z. LeWinn, Sheela Sathyanarayana, Catherine J. Karr
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Prenatal exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) may increase risk of pediatric asthma, but existing human studies are limited. OBJECTIVES: We estimated associations between gestational PAHs and pediatric asthma in a diverse US sample and evaluated effect modification by child sex, maternal asthma, and prenatal vitamin D status. METHODS: We pooled two prospective pregnancy cohorts in the ECHO PATHWAYS Consortium, CANDLE and TIDES, for an analytic sample of N = 1296 mother-child dyads. Mono-hydroxylated PAH metabolites (OH-PAHs) were measured in mid-pregnancy urine. Mothers completed the International Study on Allergies and Asthma in Childhood survey at child age 4-6 years. Poisson regression with robust standard errors was used to estimate relative risk of current wheeze, current asthma, ever asthma, and strict asthma associated with each metabolite, adjusted for potential confounders. We used interaction models to assess effect modification. We explored associations between OH-PAH mixtures and outcomes using logistic weighted quantile sum regression augmented by a permutation test to control Type 1 errors. RESULTS: = 0.004). There was no consistent evidence of modification by vitamin D status or maternal asthma. DISCUSSION: This analysis, the largest cohort study of gestational PAH exposure and childhood asthma to date, suggests adverse associations for females only. These preliminary findings are consistent with hypothesized endocrine disruption properties of PAHs, which may lead to sexually dimorphic effects.