Background: Early-life exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) may increase childhood obesity risk, but few prospective epidemiological studies have investigated this relationship.
Objective: We sought to determine whether early-life exposure to BPA was associated with increased body mass index (BMI) at 2–5 years of age in 297 mother–child pairs from Cincinnati, Ohio (HOME Study).
Methods: Urinary BPA concentrations were measured in samples collected from pregnant women during the second and third trimesters and their children at 1 and 2 years of age. BMI z-scores were calculated from weight/height measures conducted annually from 2 through 5 years of age. We used linear mixed models to estimate BMI differences or trajectories with increasing creatinine-normalized BPA concentrations.
Results: After confounder adjustment, each 10-fold increase in prenatal (β = –0.1; 95% CI: –0.5, 0.3) or early-childhood (β = –0.2; 95% CI: –0.6, 0.1) BPA concentrations was associated with a modest and nonsignificant reduction in child BMI. These inverse associations were suggestively stronger in girls than in boys [prenatal effect measure modification (EMM) p-value = 0.30, early-childhood EMM p-value = 0.05], but sex-specific associations were imprecise. Children in the highest early-childhood BPA tercile had lower BMI at 2 years (difference = –0.3; 95% CI: –0.6, 0.0) and larger increases in their BMI slope from 2 through 5 years (BMI increase per year = 0.12; 95% CI: 0.07, 0.18) than children in the lowest tercile (BMI increase per year = 0.07; 95% CI: 0.01, 0.13). All associations were attenuated without creatinine normalization.
Conclusions: Prenatal and early-childhood BPA exposures were not associated with increased BMI at 2–5 years of age, but higher early-childhood BPA exposures were associated with accelerated growth during this period.
1Department of Epidemiology, Brown University School of Public Health, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA; 2Child and Family Research Institute, BC Children’s and Women’s Hospital, Vancouver, Canada; 3Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada; 4Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA; 5Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Recommended Citation:
Joseph M. Braun,1 Bruce P. Lanphear,2,et al. Early-Life Bisphenol A Exposure and Child Body Mass Index: A Prospective Cohort Study[J]. Environmental Health Perspectives,2014-01-01,Volume 122(Issue 11):1239