Association between prenatal exposure to methylmercury and visuospatial ability at 10.7 years in the seychelles child development study.
The Seychelles Child Development Study was designed to test the hypothesis that prenatal exposure to MeHg from maternal consumption of a diet high in fish is detrimental to child neurodevelopment. To date, no consistent pattern of adverse associations between prenatal exposure and children's development has appeared. In a comprehensive review of developmental studies involving MeHg, a panel of experts recommended a more consistent use of the same endpoints across studies to facilitate comparisons. Both the SCDS and the Faeroe Islands studies administered the Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test. However, the method of test administration and scoring used was different. We repeated the test on the SCDS Main Study children (mean age 10.7 years) using the same testing and scoring procedure reported by the Faeroe studies to obtain Copying Task and Reproduction Task scores. We found no association between prenatal MeHg exposure and Copying Task scores which was reported from the Faeroese study. However, our analysis did show a significant adverse association between MeHg and Reproduction Task scores with all the data (p=0.04), but not when the single outlier was removed (p=0.07). In a population whose exposure to MeHg is from fish consumption, we continue to find no consistent adverse association between MeHg and visual motor coordination.
Davidson
Philip W
PW
University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, NY 14642, USA. phil_davidson@urmc.rochester.edu
Jean-Sloane-Reeves
Myers
Gary J
GJ
Hansen
Ole Nørby
ON
Huang
Li-Shan
LS
Georger
Leslie A
LA
Cox
Christopher
C
Thurston
Sally W
SW
Shamlaye
Conrad F
CF
Clarkson
Thomas W
TW
D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development / Q000187:drug effects*; D004305:Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008767:Methylmercury Compounds / Q000633:toxicity*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011247:Pregnancy; D011297:Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000187:drug effects*; D012044:Regression Analysis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012750:Seychelles; D013028:Space Perception / Q000187:drug effects*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000187:drug effects*
D008767:Methylmercury Compounds