Abstract
Gestational arsenic (As) exposure is associated with intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR). This study explored the association among gestational As exposure, IUGR, and reduction of folate content in maternal and umbilical plasma from 530 mother-and-singleton-offspring pairs. Birth weight (BW) was negatively correlated with As in maternal plasma (r=−0.194, P<0.001) and umbilical plasma (r=−0.235, P<0.001). By contrast, a positive correlation was found between BW and maternal folate content (r=0.198, P<0.001). The subjects were divided into As-L and As-H groups. The influence of As-H on small for gestational age (SGA) infants, a marker of IUGR, was evaluated by multivariate logistic regression that excludes interferences of gestational age, infant sex, and other confounding factors. Mothers with As-H had an elevated risk of SGA infants (adjusted OR, 2.370; P<0.05). Interestingly, maternal folate content was lower in subjects with As-H than those with As-L (22.4±10.7 vs 11.2±6.7 nmol/L, P<0.001). Linear correlation models show that As level was negatively correlated with folate content in maternal plasma (r=−0.615, P<0.001) and umbilical plasma (r=−0.209, P<0.001). Moreover, maternal folate reduction has an obvious mediating effect between increased As and decreased BW (β=−0.078, P<0.05). Our results indicate that folate reduction may be a mediator between gestational As exposure and IUGR.
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Acknowledgements
We are particularly thankful to all the participants in this study and to the medical staff responsible for collecting blood of recruited subjects at Wuxi Maternity and Child Health Care Hospital in China.
Funding
This work was supported by Key Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81930093). The work was also supported by the major scientific research project of Wuxi Municipal Health Commission (Z201902).
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Fei-Xiang Xu and Xu Chen contributed equally to this work. The following are the details of the author’s work. Fei-Xiang Xu, methodology, formal analysis, and writing—original draft; Xu Chen, formal analysis; Heng Zhang, resources, supervision, and funding acquisition; Yi-Jun Fan, formal analysis; Ya-Ping Song, writing—original draft; Jin-wei Lv, methodology; Ya-Li Xie, formal analysis; Yichao Huang, methodology and formal analysis; Dao-Zhen Chen, formal analysis; Hua Wang, resources and formal analysis; De-Xiang Xu, formal analysis, conceptualization, and funding acquisition.
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The Ethics Committee of Anhui Medical University in China approved this study (No. 20190295).
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Xu, FX., Chen, X., Zhang, H. et al. Association between gestational arsenic exposure and intrauterine growth restriction: the role of folate content. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 89652–89661 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-21961-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-21961-w