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Comparison of Blood Lead Concentrations in Mothers of Children with Congenital Heart Disease and Mothers of Healthy Children

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Abstract

Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most prevalent congenital defect that causes several problems for patients and their families and medical specialists. It is important to investigate CHD risk factors due to their significantly destructive load on society. This study aims to determine the association between maternal lead exposure and conceiving a child with CHD. This case–control study was performed on a total of 246 mothers in the pediatric clinic of Vali-e-Asr Hospital in Birjand, Iran. One hundred forty-six mothers with CHD children were defined as the case group, and 100 age-matched mothers with healthy children were considered the control group. All the mothers were between 20 and 40 years old, and their children were under the age of 6 months. Demographic data was collected from mothers using a well-designed questionnaire. In addition, all mothers were referred to the laboratory for measuring blood lead concentrations. The mean blood lead concentration (BLC) of mothers in the group of children with heart problems was 4.11 ± 10.02 with a median of 2.50 μg/dL and in the control group was 2.66 ± 2.06 with a median of 2.30 μg/dL. The Mann–Whitney test results showed that mothers’ lead concentration in the group of children with heart problems was significantly higher than the control group (z = 2.13, p = 0.03). The chi-square test results showed that lead concentrations in the two groups were significantly different from each other (χ2 = 9.11, p = 0.01). The results of our study showed that mothers of children with CHD had higher blood concentrations than mothers of healthy children.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank all the patients for participating in this study.

Funding

This research project received financial support from the Research Committee of Birjand University of Medical Sciences (Project No. 1140). At this moment, the authors express their deep gratefulness to this organization for granting the funding for the study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cardiovascular Diseases Research Center, Birjand University of Medical Sciences, Birjand, Iran

    Forod Salehi

  2. Medical Toxicology and Drug Abuse Research Center (MTDRC), Birjand University of Medical Sciences, Birjand, Iran

    Kimia Darmiani, Sameneh Nakhaee & Omid Mehrpour

  3. Endocrine Research Center, Research Institute for Endocrine Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Alireza Amirabadi zadeh

  4. Student Research Committee, Birjand University of Medical Sciences, Birjand, Iran

    Seyed Yoosef Javadmoosavi

  5. Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Tehran, Iran

    Vahideh Faghihi

  6. Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Omid Mehrpour

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  1. Forod Salehi
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Contributions

OM, FS, AA, SYJ, SN, KD, VF made substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, contributed to the writing of the manuscript, and provided critical revision and final approval. OM, SN, KD, AA made substantial contributions in drafting the manuscript and revising it critically for important intellectual content. All authors have read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Omid Mehrpour.

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The study has ethics committee approval from Birjand University of Medical Sciences.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Salehi, F., Darmiani, K., Nakhaee, S. et al. Comparison of Blood Lead Concentrations in Mothers of Children with Congenital Heart Disease and Mothers of Healthy Children. Biol Trace Elem Res 200, 2001–2007 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12011-021-02813-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12011-021-02813-z

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