Research | Children’s Health Dose–Response Relationship of Prenatal Mercury Exposure and IQ: An Integrative Analysis of Epidemiologic Data

• Main Authors: Daniel A. Axelrad, David C. Bellinger, Louise M. Ryan, Tracey J. Woodruff
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Faroe Islands; New Zealand
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.276.1456

BACKGROUND: Prenatal exposure to mercury has been associated with adverse childhood neurologic outcomes in epidemiologic studies. Dose–response information for this relationship is useful for estimating benefits of reduced mercury exposure. OBJECTIVES: We estimated a dose–response relationship between maternal mercury body burden and subsequent childhood decrements in intelligence quotient (IQ), using a Bayesian hierarchical model to integrate data from three epidemiologic studies. METHODS: Inputs to the model consist of dose–response coefficients from studies conducted in the Faroe Islands, New Zealand, and the Seychelles Islands. IQ coefficients were available from previous work for the latter two studies, and a coefficient for the Faroe Islands study was estimated from three IQ subtests. Other tests of cognition/achievement were included in the hierarchical model to obtain more accurate estimates of study-to-study and end point–to–end point variability. RESULTS: We find a central estimate of –0.18 IQ points (95 % confidence interval, –0.378 to –0.009) for each parts per million increase of maternal hair mercury, similar to the estimates for both the Faroe Islands and Seychelles studies, and lower in magnitude than the estimate for the New Zealand study. Sensitivity analyses produce similar results, with the IQ coefficient central estimate