Florez-Garcia Victor A, Wright Robert O, Keil Alexander P, Téllez-Rojo Martha M, Martínez-Medina Sandra, Estrada-Gutierrez Guadalupe, Kalkbrenner Amy E
Joseph J. Zilber College of Public Health, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, 53211, United States of America; Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, IL, 60612, United States of America; Department of Public Health, Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia.
Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, United States of America.
Environ Res. 2025 Jul 10;285(Pt 1):122323. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2025.122323.
Metal exposures impact children's intellectual functioning from pregnancy through early childhood and beyond, being historically evaluated with single-pollutant models which might create errors estimating individual metal impacts beyond other correlated metals which arise from the same shared sources.
We evaluated the effect of exposure to non-essential and essential metals on the cognitive function of Mexican children at 48 months of age.
We included persons from the Programming Research in Obesity, Growth, Environment, and Social Stressors (PROGRESS) longitudinal birth cohort in Mexico City with biomarker data on 13 non-essential (lead, cadmium, mercury, arsenic, strontium, barium, and cesium) and essential (manganese, copper, selenium, molybdenum, magnesium, and zinc) metals during pregnancy and early childhood. We assessed the child's intellectual functioning with McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities. We created a multi-media biomarker (MMB) index utilizing the Weighted Quantile Sum Regression (WQS) method. We utilized generalized linear models to estimate the change in the General Cognitive Index (GCI) per interquartile increase in the MMB index(β) and corresponding 95 % confidence intervals(CIs) in single and multipollutant models.
After adjusting for confounders in multipollutant models, MMB-cadmium (β: -1.52, 95 %CI: -3.03, -0.01) and MMB-arsenic (β: -1.53; 95 %CI: -3.02, -0.03) showed significant negative effects on intellectual functioning. In contrast, MMB-manganese (β: 2.28; 95 %CI: 0.77, 3.77), MMB-selenium (β:2.07, 95 %CI: 0.69, 3.43), and MMB-molybdenum (β: 1.76; 95 %CI: 0.21, 3.31) were the metals with the highest positive effects. We did find variations comparing results from single and multi-pollutant models, indicating the presence of multipollutant confounding.
Our study adds to the current body of literature about the co-pollutant confounding problem of evaluating metals and children's intellectual functioning, as well as the effect of understudied toxic metals of public health interest, such as barium and cesium as candidates that warrant further investigation for a possible role in children's intellectual functioning.
从孕期到幼儿期及以后，金属暴露会影响儿童的智力发育。以往使用单污染物模型进行评估，这可能会在估计个体金属暴露影响时产生误差，因为其他相关金属也来自相同的共同来源。
我们评估了非必需金属和必需金属暴露对48个月大的墨西哥儿童认知功能的影响。
我们纳入了墨西哥城肥胖、生长、环境和社会应激源编程研究（PROGRESS）纵向出生队列中的人群，这些人有孕期和幼儿期13种非必需金属（铅、镉、汞、砷、锶、钡和铯）和必需金属（锰、铜、硒、钼、镁和锌）的生物标志物数据。我们使用麦卡锡儿童能力量表评估儿童的智力发育。我们采用加权分位数和回归（WQS）方法创建了一个多媒体生物标志物（MMB）指数。我们使用广义线性模型来估计单污染物模型和多污染物模型中MMB指数每增加一个四分位数间距时一般认知指数（GCI）的变化（β）及相应的95%置信区间（CIs）。
在多污染物模型中对混杂因素进行调整后，MMB-镉（β：-1.52，95%CI：-3.03，-0.01）和MMB-砷（β：-1.53；95%CI：-3.02，-0.03）对智力发育有显著负面影响。相比之下，MMB-锰（β：2.28；95%CI：0.77，3.77）、MMB-硒（β：2.07，95%CI：0.69，3.43）和MMB-钼（β：1.76；95%CI：0.21，3.31）是具有最高正向影响的金属。我们确实发现单污染物模型和多污染物模型的结果存在差异，表明存在多污染物混杂。
我们的研究为当前有关评估金属与儿童智力发育的共污染物混杂问题以及钡和铯等公共卫生领域研究较少的有毒金属的影响的文献增添了内容，这些金属作为可能在儿童智力发育中起作用的候选物质值得进一步研究。
