Associations between metal concentrations in whole blood and placenta previa and placenta accreta: the Japan Environment and Children’s Study (JECS)

Tsuji Mayumi

Shibata Eiji

Askew David J.

Morokuma Seiichi

Aiko Yukiyo

Senju Ayako

Araki Shunsuke

Sanefuji Masafumi

Ishihara Yasuhiro

Tanaka Rie

Kusuhara Koichi

Kawamoto Toshihiro

Japan Environment and Children’s Study Group

Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine

Background: Placenta previa and placenta accreta associate with high morbidity and mortality for both mothers and fetus. Metal exposure may have relationships with placenta previa and placenta accreta. This study analyzed the associations between maternal metal (cadmium [Cd], lead [Pb], mercury [Hg], selenium [Se], and manganese [Mn]) concentrations and placenta previa and placenta accreta.
Methods: We recruited 17,414 women with singleton pregnancies. Data from a self-administered questionnaire regarding the first trimester and medical records after delivery were analyzed. Maternal blood samples were collected to measure metal concentrations. The subjects were classified into four quartiles (Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4) according to metal concentrations.
Results: The odds ratio for placenta previa was significantly higher among subjects with Q4 Cd than those with Q1 Cd. The odds ratio for placenta previa was significantly higher for subjects with Q2 Pb than those with Q1 Pb.
Conclusion: Participants with placenta previa had higher Cd concentrations. However, this study was crosssectional and lacked important information related to Cd concentration, such as detailed smoking habits and sources of Cd intake. In addition, the subjects in this study comprised ordinary pregnant Japanese women, and it was impossible to observe the relationship between a wide range of Cd exposure and placenta previa. Therefore, epidemiological and experimental studies are warranted to verify the relationship between Cd exposure and pregnancy abnormalities.

Metal concentration

Placenta previa

Placenta accreta

Pregnancy

eng

BMC

© The Author(s). 2019 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

[ISSN] 1342-078X

[ISSN] 1347-4715

[DOI] 10.1186/s12199-019-0795-7

[PMID] 31174461

[DOI] https://doi.org/10.1186/s12199-019-0795-7