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 log10 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 log10 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.