title: Prenatal lead exposure and weight of 0- to 5-year-old children in Mexico city.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Cumulative prenatal lead exposure, as measured by maternal bone lead burden, has been associated with smaller weight of offspring at birth and 1 month of age, but no study has examined whether this effect persists into early childhood.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  We investigated the association of perinatal maternal bone lead, a biomarker of cumulative prenatal lead exposure, with children's attained weight over time from birth to 5 years of age.
  
  
  METHODS
  Children were weighed at birth and at several intervals up until 60 months. Maternal tibia and patella lead were measured at 1 month postpartum using in vivo K-shell X-ray fluorescence. We used varying coefficient models with random effects to assess the association of maternal bone lead with weight trajectories of 522 boys and 477 girls born between 1994 and 2005 in Mexico City.
  
  
  RESULTS
  After controlling for breast-feeding duration, maternal anthropometry, and sociodemographic characteristics, a 1-SD increase in maternal patella lead (micrograms per gram) was associated with a 130.9-g decrease in weight [95% confidence interval (CI), -227.4 to -34.4 g] among females and a 13.0-g nonsignificant increase in weight among males (95% CI, -73.7 to 99.9 g) at 5 years of age. These associations were similar after controlling for concurrent blood lead levels between birth and 5 years.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Maternal bone lead was associated with lower weight over time among female but not male children up to 5 years of age. Given that the association was evident for patellar but not tibial lead levels, and was limited to females, results need to be confirmed in other studies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
authors.forename: Myriam
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Afeiche
authors.forename: Karen E
authors.initials: KE
authors.lastname: Peterson
authors.forename: Brisa N
authors.initials: BN
authors.lastname: Sánchez
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Cantonwine
authors.forename: Héctor
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Lamadrid-Figueroa
authors.forename: Lourdes
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Schnaas
authors.forename: Adrienne S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Ettinger
authors.forename: Mauricio
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hernández-Avila
authors.forename: Howard
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Martha M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Téllez-Rojo
mesh_terms: D001835:Body Weight / Q000502:physiology*; D001942:Breast Feeding; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007854:Lead / Q000633:toxicity*; D008297:Male; D008800:Mexico; D011247:Pregnancy; D011297:Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects; D012737:Sex Factors
chemical_list: D007854:Lead