Exposure to Brominated Flame Retardants and Cognitive Function Open Access
Monarrez, Eduardo (Spring 2022)
Published
Abstract
Background: Polybrominated Biphenyls (PBBs) are synthetic, bioaccumulative, compounds that were used as flame retardants. In 1973, a chemical factory incident resulted in the exposure of PBB through contamination of cattle feed and human consumption of by-products for years. The Michigan PBB Registry was created, and the occurrence of various health conditions have been obtained out of this cohort. No study has been done to look at the effect of PBB on mild cognitive impairment to date. In this longitudinal, cross-sectional study, we test the association between PBB exposure and abnormal scores on the cognitive functioning instrument.
Methods: Tertiles were created of serum PBB levels to evaluate their association with abnormal scores on the Cognitive Function Instrument. Serum PBB levels were also natural log transformed to evaluate their association with abnormal CFI scores. Logistic regression was performed to evaluate models including age and age at exposure, separately. Potential confounders included sex, age, age at exposure, cardiovascular conditions, smoking status, and alcohol use. The cognitive functioning instrument results were dichotomized for analysis. All statistical analyses were conducted in SAS version 9.4 and p-values less than 0.05 were considered significant.
Results: Among our 316 participants, no statistically significant association was found between log transformed PBB and abnormal scores on the Cognitive Function Instrument in both of our models. Our adjusted odds ratio for our log-transformed PBB was 1.087 (0.758, 1.558) controlling for age, and 1.074 (0.756, 1.527) controlling for age at exposure. However, we did find an association between PBB exposure and hypertension in our bivariate analysis (p-value=0.0011).
Conclusions: Exposure to PBBs was not significantly associated with abnormal scores on the cognitive function instrument in our study population. An association between PBB exposure and hypertension was found in our study population.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Literature Review…………………………………………………………………...1
Chapter II: Manuscript………………………………………………………………………….9
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………...9
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..10
Methods………………………………………………………………………………….12
Results…………………………………………………………………………………...16
Discussion……………………………………………………………………………….19
References……………………………………………………………………………………….22
Tables……………………………………………………………………………………………29
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