Organochlorine Pesticides Concentrations in Maternal Serum and Their Effects on Umbilical Cord Serum Pesticides Concentrations, Neonatal Birth Weight and Gestational Age

Recently, much attention has been focused on t h e e ffe c t s of pes ticides on human health. This work was conducted to s tudy the effects of high maternal serum organochlorine pes ticides levels on umbilical cord serum pes ticides levels , neonatal birth weight and ges tational age. The present s tudy was carried out on 123 n ormal pregnant women from El-Kasr El-Eini Hospital and their newborns at t h e time of delivery. The age of the mothers ranged from 20 to 29 years . All mothers had moderate socio-economic s tatus . W e exclude mothers with poor obs tetric his tory, multiple ges tation, hypertens ion, preeclampsia or had acute or chronic illness from this s tudy. The neonates were class ified into two groups . The firs t group cons is ted o f 80 fu ll term (F.T) babies , 41 of them were male (51.2% ). T h e s econd group were 43 premature (PT) neonates , 21 were male (49%). 18 of the P.T neonates were below or equal t o 32 weeks ges tational age (G.A) and 25 were more than 32 weeks G.A. The orgnochlorine p e s ticides levels were determined from the blood serum of all the mothers and fro m t h e u mb ilical cord serum of their neonates . Heptachlor pes ticides was found in all the samples of the preterm’s motherneonate dyads . The pes ticide found in the highes t concentration in maternal and cord serum of preterm neonates was heptachlor 7 mic/L followe d by DDT 6 mic /L and h e p t a c h lor epoxide 4.4 mic/L. W e found a high concentration of serum hepatachlor, endrin, heptachlor epoxide, dieldrin and DDT in the umbilical cord serum of PT neonates and in the seru m of their mothers compared to those of full term neonates and the difference was s tatis tically highly s ignificant (P<0.001). Also t h e s e ru m le vels of heptachlor and DDT in the umbilical cord of PT 32 weeks GA were higher than those of PT> 32 weeks GA and this differen c e wa s s ig n ificant P< 0.001 and P< 0.05 respectively. As regards gender, no s ignificant s tatis tical difference was found in t h e s e rum pes ticides levels of the umbilical cord between male and female P> 0.05. Our re s u lt s showed a highly s ignificant pos itive correlation between maternal and umbilical cord serum heptachlor, endrin, heptachlor epoxide, dieldrin and DDT p e s t icides (r =1 and P< 0.001) while a negative c o rre la tion was found between maternal serum pesticides and ges tational age, neonatal birth weight , length and hea d circumference. Also a negative correlations between umbilical cord serum heptachlor (r = -0.8, P<0.001), DDT (r = -0.5, P<0.001) and each of birth weight, length and head circumference were observe d and these correlations were s tatis tically s ignificant. W hereas no s ignificant correlation was showed between maternal serum pes ticides and maternal age. W e need to s trengthe n o ur efforts towards prev e n t io n of pes ticides exposure by the health education and by reducing the spread of pes ticides in the environment.