Associations between repeated measurements of childhood triclosan exposure and physical growth at 7 years

Background: Epidemiological studies suggested that triclosan (TCS) exposure was ubiquitous among children and could affect their physical growth. However, most studies relied on TCS exposure at single time point, and the impacts of multiple time points TCS exposure were unclear.Objectives: To estimate the associations between repeated TCS measurements in childhood (at ages 1, 2, 5, and 7 years) and physical growth at 7 years.Methods: This study included 206 children from Laizhou Wan Birth Cohort (LWBC), China. Urinary TCS con-centrations were detected at age of 1, 2, 5, and 7 years, and physical growth including height, weight, waist circumference, and fat percentage was measured at 7 years. Multiple informant models were applied to examine the relationships of repeated TCS measurements in childhood with physical growth, and stratified analysis by gender was performed. Results: The detection rates of TCS at age of 1, 2, 5, and 7 years were above 60%, with median declining from 0.89 to 0.33 mu g/g creatinine. We found TCS at 5 years was positively associated with waist-to-height ratio, and TCS at 7 years was positively associated with physical growth, including weight z-score, BMI z-score, waist circumference, waist-to-height ratio, and fat percentage. Moreover, the above associations for weight z-score, BMI z-score, and fat percentage significantly varied by the period of exposure (pint < 0.05). After stratified by gender, positive associations were only found among boys.Conclusions: In our study, TCS levels decreased as children's age increased. TCS exposures at age of 5 and 7 years were positively associated with physical growth at 7 years, and these associations were only significant in boys. Given the relatively small sample size, our findings should be interpreted with caution until confirmed by further investigation.

Automated summary

This study found that triclosan (TCS) exposure levels decreased as children's age increased in a Chinese birth cohort. TCS exposure at ages 5 and 7 was positively associated with physical growth at age 7, and these associations were only significant in boys.