Prenatal air pollution exposure tied to increased risk for cerebral palsy
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Key takeaways:
- Each interquartile range increase of 2.7 µg/m3 in prenatal ambient air pollution concentration was tied to increased risk for cerebral palsy.
- Male vs. female infants had higher cerebral palsy risk.
Prenatal exposure to ambient air pollution was associated with increased risk for children developing cerebral palsy, according to cohort study results published in JAMA Network Open.
“Prenatal exposure to air pollution is associated with decelerated neurological development early in life and increased risk of neurodevelopmental problems,” Yu Zhang, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow in the department of environmental health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and colleagues wrote. “Although no animal or human study has ever reported a direct link between air pollution and cerebral palsy, it is possible that air pollution may increase the risk of cerebral palsy following similar pathophysiological pathways.”
Zhang and colleagues conducted a large-scale population cohort study using data from 1,587,935 mother-child pairs (mean maternal age, 30.1 years) from linked, province-wide health administrative databases in Ontario, Canada. All participants were singleton full-term births born from April 2002 to March 2017. Researchers assessed average weekly concentrations of ambient fine particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 µm or smaller, nitrogen dioxide and ozone during pregnancy assigned to participants using the reported residential address at childbirth.
Primary outcome was cerebral palsy identified by a single inpatient hospitalization diagnosis or at least two outpatient diagnoses for children from birth to 18 years.
Overall, 0.2% of children were diagnosed with cerebral palsy with a median age of 1 year at diagnosis.
Each interquartile range increase of 2.7 µg/m3 in prenatal ambient air pollution concentration was associated with an increased risk for children developing cerebral palsy (cumulative HR = 1.12; 95% CI, 1.03-1.21). Compared with female infants (cumulative HR = 1.08; 95% CI, 0.96-1.22), male infants had a higher risk for developing cerebral palsy (cumulative HR = 1.14; 95% CI, 1.02-1.26).
Researchers observed no specific window of susceptibility for prenatal ambient air pollution exposure and cerebral palsy development. In addition, researchers noted no associations or windows of susceptibility for prenatal exposure to nitrogen dioxide or ozone and cerebral palsy risk.
“The findings of this large cohort study could advance the identification of existing environmental risk factors for cerebral palsy development and better inform interventions to mitigate the potential risk of cerebral palsy during fetus development,” the researchers wrote. “Further studies are needed to validate the associations and explore potential modifiers.”