Chemical exposures from the environment can have a profound effect on health outcomes, especially for pregnant mothers and their babies. Prenatal development is a carefully controlled biological process that is sensitive to environmental chemicals and maternal health.
In order to better understand the impact of chemical exposures on prenatal development, ECHO researchers Brett Doherty, PhD, MSPH, and Megan Romano, PhD, MPH of Dartmouth College used emerging technologies to investigate the link between chemical exposures and prenatal chemical processes. Their research, titled “Chemical co-exposures assessed via silicone wristbands and endogenous plasma metabolomics during pregnancy” is published in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology.
During this investigation, 177 pregnant women enrolled in the New Hampshire Birth Cohort Study (NHBCS) were given silicone wristbands to wear for a week in the early stages of their pregnancy. These wristbands captured snapshots of the chemical exposures the mothers experienced during pregnancy. Three months later, the researchers collected blood samples from the mothers for further analysis.
This analysis utilized metabolomics, a relatively new technology that involves the quantification of all the small molecule building blocks in a sample as a way to determine what chemical processes are occurring in the system.
“We used new tools to investigate how chemicals can affect important small molecules during pregnancy,” said Doherty, “which provided clues to the impacts of those chemicals on the health of the mother and the baby.”
The researchers found that several of the chemical exposures experienced by women in the study were associated with changes in the relative amounts of different important chemical building blocks. Specifically, many of the exposures, including exposures to the insecticide DEET, were associated with changes in the amounts of various amino acids that make up many of the proteins vital to prenatal development.
These results may provide a useful framework for further investigations into the effects of prenatal chemical exposures. “Future investigations may find it helpful to link the impacts we observed to related health processes and outcomes,” Romano noted.