Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HYGIENE AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH
Volume 222, Issue 8, Pages 1059-1067Publisher
ELSEVIER GMBH
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijheh.2019.07.005
Keywords
Human biomonitoring; HEM; Birth cohort; Lead; Harmonization; Pregnancy; Child; Environment
Funding
- Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence funding scheme [262700]
- Ministry of the Environment, Japan
- Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, and Nuclear Safety of Germany
- French Ministry of Environment and Public Health
- Ministry of the Environment of Japan
- Norwegian Ministry of Health and Care Services
- Ministry of Education and Research, NIH/NIEHS [N01-ES-75558]
- NIH/NINDS [1 UO1 NS 047537-01, 2 UO1 NS 047537-06A1]
- Danish National Research Foundation
- Danish Ministry of Health, Danish Research Councils
- EU
- NIH
- March of Dimes Foundation
- Shanghai Bureau of Health
- German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety
- French Ministry of Health
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A number of prospective cohort studies are ongoing worldwide to investigate the impact of foetal and neonatal exposures to chemical substances on child health. To assess multiple exposure (mixture) effects and low prevalence health outcomes it is useful to pool data from several studies and conduct mega-data-analysis. To discuss a path towards data harmonization, representatives from several large-scale birth cohort studies and a biomonitoring programme formed a collaborative group, the Environment and Child Health International Birth Cohort Group (ECHIBCG). In this study, an intra-laboratory trial was performed to harmonize existing blood lead measurements within the groups' studies. Then, decentralized analyses were conducted in individual countries' laboratories to evaluate blood lead levels (BLL) in each study. The measurements of pooled BLL samples in French, German and three Japanese laboratories resulted in an overall mean blood lead concentration of 8.66 mu gl(-1) (95% confidence interval: 8.59-8.72 mu gl(-1) ) with 3.0% relative standard deviation. Except for China's samples, BLL from each study were comparable with mean concentrations below or close to 10 mu gl(-1). The decentralized multivariate analyses revealed that all models had coefficients of determination below 0.1. Determinants of BLL were current smoking, age > 35 years and overweight or obese status. The three variables were associated with an increase in BLL in each of the five studies, most strongly in France by almost 80% and the weakest effect being in Norway with only 15%; for Japan, with the far largest sample (similar to 18,000), the difference was 36%. This study successfully demonstrated that the laboratory analytical methods were sufficiently similar to allow direct comparison of data and showed that it is possible to harmonize the epidemiological data for joint analysis. This exercise showed the challenges in decentralized data analyses and reinforces the need for data harmonization among studies.
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