| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立陽明大學 === 環境與職業衛生研究所 === 105 === Parabens are a group of esters of parahydroxybenzoic acid, and also a kind of EDs. Because of their characteristic of antimicrobial preservatives, human can be easily exposed to the chemicals through food additives in food and personal care products (PCPs) such as cosmetics, lotions, and dietary intake. Pregnant women are vulnerable when being in contact with parabens through the PCPs or foodstuffs. However, the epidemiological studies on the adverse effects of paraben are still limited, especially in Asia. The aims of this study include (1) to determine, for the first time, parabens levels in urine of the pregnant women in Taiwan, (2) to investigate the correlation between prenatal exposure to paraben and birth outcomes, (3) to compare our results with studies in other countries.
In this study, pregnant women and their fetuses were followed-up. The biospecimen was maternal urine collected at the third pregnancy trimester. A questionnaire was used to collect socio-demographic data of the pregnant women. Information about birth outcomes of the fetus was obtained from medical records. As for chemicals analysis, we measured four common parabens (methyl, ethyl, propyl, butyl) in urine using off-line SPE-UPLC-QTof-MS method and the concentrations were adjusted with creatinine.
The result showed that the GM levels of urinary MP, EP, PP, and BP were 57.09, 1.53, 4.65, and 1.29 g/g creatinine respectively. Comparing with other country, our data of MP and PP were lower than others whereas EP was similar with U.S, but lower than most of other countries. It is hard to compare BP levels, because of the low detection rates in some studies. There were significantly positive correlation among all of the parabens. In addition, our preliminary results showed that per unit (g/g Cr) of maternal methyl paraben would increase 0.40 centimeters of head circumference of the newborns.(β=0.4, p-value=0.0052) In addition, maternal methyl and ethyl paraben exposure might have higher birth weight and longer body length respectively; the fourth quartile of maternal butyl paraben exposure might have lower head circumference and chest circumference. We also found that infancy gender- and parity-specific might cause some effects between prenatal paraben exposure and birth outcomes.
This is the first study that reports the association between parabens exposure and birth outcome in Taiwan. Future work is needed to confirm the causal correlation, and we suggested to reduce the use of parabens in PCPs products during pregnancy.
|
|---|
