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The Relationship of Children’s Intelligence Quotient and Blood Lead and Zinc Levels: a Meta-analysis and System Review

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze the existing studies and to investigate the relationship between children’s full-scale intelligence quotient (FIQ), verbal IQ (VIQ), and performance IQ (PIQ) and their blood lead (Pb) and zinc (Zn) levels. All documents in Chinese and English were collected from the PubMed, Web of Science, and Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) databases from inception date to December 30, 2016. RevMan software (version 5.2) was used for the meta-analysis and Stata software (version 12.0) for the meta-regression and sensitivity analyses. A total of 32 eligible literatures was included in the study. Seven prevalence studies showed that the blood Pb level was negatively correlated with children’s IQ. The results of the meta-analysis from 22 case-control studies indicate a significant difference between FIQ and PIQ with blood Pb levels, detailed as the FIQ score with a weighted mean difference (WMD) = −6.60 (95% CI: −9.01, −4.20), P < 0.001; PIQ WMD = −8.85 (95% CI: −12.651, −5.05), P < 0.001; but VIQ WMD = −3.32 (95% CI: −6.98, 0.33), P > 0.05. Three studies on the blood Zn concentrations were with a FIQ WMD = 7.88 (95% CI: −0.07, 15.83), VIQ WMD = 7.73 (95% CI: −7.40, 22.86), and PIQ WMD = 6.69 (95% CI: −7.13, 20.51), all P > 0.05. The results indicate that Pb is harmful to children’s intelligence development, especially in PIQ. Zn is beneficial to intelligence, although more studies are needed.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank all members of Professor CH Wang’s Laboratory in Wuhan University for their valuable assistance and Guoxun Chen (Associate Professor) in The University of Tennessee at Knoxville for the revision of the manuscript. The project was supported by The National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81172628) and The National Science Foundation for Post-doctoral Scientists of China (No. 2015M582279).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Preventive Medicine, School of Health Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430071, People’s Republic of China

    Yu Wu, Jiantao Sun, Minsheng Wang, Guangxia Yu & Chunhong Wang

  2. Department of Nursing, School of Health Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430071, People’s Republic of China

    Liping Yu

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Correspondence to Liping Yu or Chunhong Wang.

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Wu, Y., Sun, J., Wang, M. et al. The Relationship of Children’s Intelligence Quotient and Blood Lead and Zinc Levels: a Meta-analysis and System Review. Biol Trace Elem Res 182, 185–195 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12011-017-1093-0

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