Prenatal exposure to PFAS and the association with neurobehavioral and social development during childhood
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) is ubiquitous and may be associated with neurodevelopmental toxicity. However, epidemiological studies report mixed results on the risks of gestational PFAS exposure for children's neurobehavioral impairment. We aimed to examine the associations between prenatal PFAS exposure and children's neurobehavioral and social problems. We measured plasma concentrations of perfluorooctanoate (PFOA), perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), and perfluorohexane sulphonate (PFHxS) in first-trimester blood from 757 women from the Canadian Maternal-Infant Research on Environmental Chemicals (MIREC) study. Children were assessed at 3–4 years with the Behavior Assessment System for Children-2 (BASC-2) and the Social Responsiveness Scale-2 (SRS-2) (n = 756 and 496, respectively). We used multivariable linear regression to examine associations between individual and summed log 2 -transformed PFAS and scores on these assessments. Effect modification by sex was evaluated through interaction terms and stratified analyses. In the sample combining both sexes, a doubling of maternal PFOA was significantly associated with lower T-scores on the following SRS-2 scales: Social Motivation, DSM-Social Communication, and SRS Total score (B ranging from -1.08 to -0.78), suggesting lesser impairments with higher exposure. In sex-stratified analysis, PFOA was related to significantly lower T-scores in boys for these BASC-2 scales: Behavioral Symptoms Index, Externalizing Problems, Aggression, and Hyperactivity (B ranging from -1.32 to -1.03). In girls, however, PFAS were associated with more problem behaviors, but most associations were small and the CIs included the null, with the exception of PFOA being significantly associated with higher T-scores for the BASC-2Anxiety scale (B = 1.84, 95% CI: 0.36, 3.32). In conclusion, we did not observe strong associations between prenatal exposure to the PFAS evaluated and children's neurobehavioral and social development in this population with low exposure levels. The results show mixed findings, depending on children's sex, neurodevelopmental outcome, and specific PFAS. • We studied associations between prenatal PFAS and child neurobehavioral and social development. • Some indications of sex-specific associations were observed. • PFAS were related to fewer neurobehavioral problems in boys but the reverse in girls.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".