Correlations between Prenatal Exposure to Perfluorinated Chemicals and Reduced Fetal Growth

BACKGROUND: Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoate (PFOA) are man-made, ubiquitous, and persistent contaminants in the environment, wildlife, and humans. Although recent studies have shown that these chemicals interfere with fetal growth in humans, the results are inconsistent. OBJECTIVES: Our goal was to investigate the correlation between relatively low levels of PFOS and PFOA in maternal serum and birth weight and birth size. METHODS: We conducted a hospital-based prospective cohort study between July 2002 and October 2005 in Sapporo, Japan. A total of 428 women and their infants were involved in the study. We obtained characteristics of the mothers and infants from self-administered questionnaire surveys and from medical records. We analyzed maternal serum samples for PFOS and PFOA by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS). RESULTS: After adjusting for confounding factors, PFOS levels negatively correlated with birth weight [per log(10) unit: beta = -148.8 g; 95% confidence interval (CI), -297.0 to -0.5 g]. In addition, analyses stratified by sex revealed that PFOS levels negatively correlated with birth weight only in female infants (per log(10) unit: beta = -269.4 g; 95% CI, -465.7 to -73.0 g). However, we observed no correlation between PFOA levels and birth weight. CONCLUSION: Our results indicate that in utero exposure to relatively low levels of PFOS was negatively correlated with birth weight.