Prenatal bisphenol exposure and intelligence quotient in children at six years of age: A prospective cohort study

The effects of prenatal bisphenol A (BPA) exposure on children's cognitive development have been reported; however, relevant evidence on BPA analogues was limited, with rare evidence of the joint effect of their mixture. Among 424 mother-offspring pairs from the Shanghai-Minhang Birth Cohort Study, maternal urinary concentrations of five bisphenols (BPs) were quantified, and children's cognitive function was assessed by the Wechsler Intelligence Scale at six years of age. We assessed the associations of prenatal exposure to individual BPs with children's intelligence quotient (IQ) and analyzed the joint effect of BPs mixture by the Quantile g-computation model (QGC) and Bayesian kernel machine regression model (BKMR). QGC models showed that higher maternal urinary BPs mixture concentrations were associated with lower scores among boys in a non-linear way; however, no association was observed in girls. For individual effects, BPA and BPF were associated with decreased IQ scores in boys and were identified as important contributors to the joint effect of BPs mixture. However, associations of BPA with increased IQ scores in girls, and TCBPA with increased IQ scores in both sexes were observed. Our findings suggested prenatal exposure to BPs mixture may affect children's cognitive function in a sex-specific pattern and provided evidence of the neurotoxicity of BPA and BPF.