Visuospatial processing and fine motor function among 7-years old Guadeloupe children pre- and postnatally exposed to the organochlorine pesticide chlordecone

• Published in: Neurotoxicology (Park Forest South) 2022-01, Vol.88, p.208-215
• Main Authors: Desrochers-Couture, Mireille, Cordier, Sylvaine, Rouget, Florence, Michineau, Léah, Monfort, Christine, Thomé, Jean-Pierre, Kadhel, Philippe, Multigner, Luc, Muckle, Gina
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adaptive systems; Age; Blood; Borers; Childhood; Children; Children & youth; Chlordecone; Chlordecone - blood; Chlordecone - toxicity; Contaminants; Contamination; Copying; Cutting tools; Environmental Exposure - adverse effects; Environmental Exposure - statistics & numerical data; Exposure; Female; Food sources; Guadeloupe; Humans; Information processing; Insecticides; Insecticides - blood; Insecticides - toxicity; Intoxication; Life Sciences; Male; Motor function; Motor Skills - drug effects; Organic compounds; Organochlorine pesticide; Organochlorine pesticides; Pesticides; Pregnancy; Prenatal experience; Prenatal exposure; Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects - chemically induced; Psychomotor Disorders - chemically induced; Public health; Sediment pollution; Sensorimotor integration; Sex; Soil contamination; Soil pollution; Testing time; Tremor; Tremors; Visual observation; Visual processing; Water pollution
• ISSN: 0161-813X; 1872-9711
• DOI: 10.1016/j.neuro.2021.12.003

•Chlordecone, an organochlorine pesticide, is a known endocrine disrupter.•Today it still contaminates food products and the population of French West Indies.•Prenatal chlordecone exposure was associated with child subtle hand tremors.•Childhood exposure was associated with poorer visual processing and fine movement.•Effects on fine motor function confirm reports in early childhood in this cohort. Chlordecone is an organochlorine that was largely used as an insecticide to control a species of root borers, the Banana weevil (Cosmopolites sordidus), in the French West Indies, Guadeloupe and Martinique. Its molecules have been shown to be very persistent in the environment as pollution in soils leading to contamination of water sources and foodstuff will last for several decades. Our team previously reported associations between prenatal chlordecone exposure and poorer fine motor development at two points in time during infancy. To document whether effects of prenatal exposure to chlordecone previously reported persists until middle-childhood, and whether deleterious effects are observed in domain of visual processing. Associations with postnatal exposure and sex-specific vulnerabilities were also investigated. We examined 410 children from the TIMOUN mother-child cohort in Guadeloupe at 7 years of age. Concentrations of chlordecone and other environmental contaminants were measured in cord- and children’s blood at age 7 years. Fine motor function was assessed using the Bruininks Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency Second Edition (BOT-2). The Computerized Adaptive Testing System (CATSYS) was used to evaluated postural hand tremor, while non-verbal visuospatial processing was measured using the Stanford Binet copying (S-B copying) test. We used adjusted multiple linear regressions to test the relationship between children’s scores and both continuous and categorical blood chlordecone concentrations, adding child sex as a moderator in continuous models. Cord chlordecone concentrations are associated with a regular frequency pattern of subtle hand tremors in both hands, and not related to visual processing and fine motor precision. Chlordecone concentrations in blood sample collected at testing time are associated with poorer visual processing when copying geometric figures, but not significantly related to poorer fine movement precision in tasks requiring pencil, scissors and paper. No sex-specific vulnerability was reported in any of the outcomes. These result