| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 職業醫學與工業衛生研究所 === 92 === As we know lead might affect the neurophysiological development of children. The purpose of this study was to identify the association between children’s neurobehavioral performance and the teeth level of prenatal and postnatal lead exposed. We used deciduous primary teeth to be prenatal and postnatal lead exposed biomarker.
Our study was a retrospective cohort study. We included the seven to ten years old children whose father or mother worked in battery factories during pregnancy period. Moreover we enrolled the children of an elementary school as the reference group, who lived in the similar development of the city as the exposure group. We tested the computerized Neurobehavioral Evaluation System 2 in Chinese version (CNES-2) and collected basic questionnaires and deciduous teeth. We collected 50 deciduous teeth of exposed group , and 96 deciduous teeth of reference group. The lead analyses of primary teeth used different part of the teeth to identify prenatal and postnatal lead exposed. The deciduous teeth used Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) to detect lead. In children neurobehavioral test, we used CNES2 and the items of testing included finger tapping, continuous performance test, visual digit span, pattern comparison, and pattern memory. The confounders of this study included maternal educational level, home environment, and parents rear. We used Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment scale (HOME scale) to interview and collect the information.
We used independent Student’s t test to compare the CNES2 results between exposure and non-exposure groups. After adjusted children sex, age, HOME scale, maternal educational level, and computer game experience, we used multiple linear regressions to analyze the relation between prenatal or postnatal teeth lead and CNES2. The results showed the postnatal teeth lead was significant higher than prenatal one. No matter pre or postnatal, there was significant higher level of lead in exposed and non-exposed group. The prenatal and postnatal teeth lead level showed reverse relationship to preferred hand of finger tapping and omission of continuous performance test.
According to our results, we found that lead exposure might influence children neurobehavioral performance expressed in finger tapping and continuous performance test. It might represent lead exposure will effect motor function and visual function. Base on the result we proposed the battery workers should attach important to their sanitary habits to avoid the increase of lead exposure to their children.
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