Associations of prenatal dietary exposure to multiple trace elements and child neurodevelopment in the ELFE mother-child cohort.

Authors

Zheng Wang, Manel Ghozal, Jonathan Y Bernard, Véronique Sirot, Amélie Crepet, Marie-Aline Charles, Blandine de Lauzon-Guillain, Manik Kadawathagedara

Published in

Environment international. Volume 214. Pages 110382. Jun 27, 2026. Epub Jun 27, 2026.

Abstract

Prenatal exposure to neurotoxic trace elements may disrupt early brain development, with diet as a major exposure pathway during pregnancy. This study examined the associations between maternal dietary exposure to trace elements during late pregnancy and child neurodevelopment at 3.5 years.
We analyzed 10,080 mother-child pairs from the Étude Longitudinale Française depuis l'Enfance (ELFE) study. Maternal dietary exposure to 14 trace elements was assessed by combining a food frequency questionnaire with trace element content data in foodstuffs. Child neurodevelopment was evaluated at 3.5 years using the Child Development Inventory (CDI). Multivariable linear regression, Bayesian kernel machine regression (BKMR) and quantile g-computation (QGC) were performed to examine joint and individual associations of the maternal dietary exposure to the trace element mixture with CDI-3.5 score, adjusting for potential confounders.
Higher maternal dietary exposure to trace element mixture was associated with higher child neurodevelopmental score at 3.5 years in both BKMR and QGC models. Regarding individual prenatal trace element exposure, antimony was negatively associated, whereas inorganic mercury and tin were positively associated with CDI-3.5 score. Manganese and germanium showed positive associations only in multivariable linear regression models. These associations were consistent in direction with the assigned weights in QGC model. No significant associations were observed for other trace elements.
We found complex associations between prenatal trace element exposure and child neurodevelopment. These findings highlight the role of trace elements in early brain development, underscoring the need for further longitudinal studies to confirm these associations and clarify underlying mechanisms.

PMID:
42391972
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 03 Jul 2026.

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