Sex and poverty modify associations between maternal peripartum concentrations of DDT/E and pyrethroid metabolites and thyroid hormone levels in neonates participating in the VHEMBE study, South Africa
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS), the application of insecticides on the inside walls of dwellings, is used by 84 countries for malaria control. Although effective in preventing malaria, this practice results in elevated insecticide exposure to >100 million people, most of whom are Africans. Pyrethroid insecticides and dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane (DDT) are currently used for IRS. Animal and in vitro studies suggest that pyrethroids and DDT interfere with thyroid hormone homeostasis but human studies are inconsistent and no prior study has investigated this question in a population residing in an area where IRS is conducted. Our objective was thus to evaluate whether prenatal exposure to pyrethroids, DDT or DDT's breakdown product dichlorodiphenyl dichloroethylene (DDE) is associated with altered thyroid hormone levels among neonates from Limpopo, South Africa, where pyrethroids and DDT are used annually to control malaria. We measured serum DDT/E and urinary pyrethroid metabolite concentrations in maternal peripartum samples from 717 women participating in the Venda Health Examination of Mothers, Babies and their Environment (VHEMBE), a birth cohort study conducted in Limpopo's Vhembe district. We measured total thyroxine (T4) and thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) in dried blood spots collected via heel stick. We found that all pyrethroid metabolites were positively associated with TSH; trans-DCCA and 3-PBA showed the strongest associations with a 12.3% (95%CI = 3.0, 22.3) and 14.0% (95%CI = 0.5, 30.2) change for each 10-fold increase in biomarker concentration, respectively. These associations were substantially stronger among children from households below the South African food poverty line. DDT and DDE were associated with lower total T4 among boys only (β = -0.27 μg/dL per 10-fold increase; 95%CI = -0.47, -0.04). Results suggest that prenatal exposure to DDT, DDE and pyrethroid insecticides is associated with changes in neonatal thyroid hormones consistent with hypothyroidism/hypothyroxinemia and that sex and poverty modify associations. Further research is needed to confirm these findings and examine whether they have implications for child development.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".