Prenatal Exposure to Pesticides Increases Neurodevelopmental Disorders Risk

New study in mice suggests a causal role for developmental popular pyrethroid pesticide exposure in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism.

The popular pesticide pyrethroid deltamethrin (DPE) is implicated as a direct cause of Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD)-relevant behavior and dysfunction of dopamine (a type of neurotransmitter and hormone) in mice, according to a study presented in the journal PNAS Nexus.

Neurodevelopmental disorders are pervasive, often incurable disorders affecting as many as 17% of children in the United States. Many of these disorders have few or no established biomarkers, few or no medical treatments, and can only be diagnosed behaviourally.

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‘Ambient prenatal exposure to pyrethroid pesticides poses a risk for autism, developmental delay, and neurodevelopmental disorders.’

Apart from being a hereditary disorder, other developmental risk factors include advanced parental age, vitamin deficiency, maternal medications, and environmental chemical exposures such as heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants, and pesticides.

Previous studies have shown that nearly half of the risk for neurodevelopment disorders, including autism, is environmental, but few specific environmental causes have been identified. The new study conducted among 72 mice mothers and their litters suggests a popular pesticide may cause neurodevelopmental disorders in humans.

Prenatal Exposure to Pesticides Induces Behavioral Deficits Associated with Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Hence, researchers exposed mice to low doses of pyrethroid pesticide deltamethrin during pregnancy and lactation. Pyrethroid pesticides are widely used in the United States and are found in most urban streams. Up to 70-80% of the US population has pyrethroid metabolites at detectable levels in their blood.

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Pups of exposed mothers vocalized less compared to pups of unexposed mothers. As adults, the offspring of exposed mothers showed reduced cognition and increased repetitive behaviors, including repetitive grooming, and burying of marbles in cage bedding, compared with the offspring of unexposed mothers.

However, there were no differences between groups in terms of sociality. Offspring of exposed mothers also had higher levels of striatal dopamine than the offspring of unexposed mothers.

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These results suggest that exposure to pyrethroid pesticides during development causes a behavioral phenotype in mice that is relevant to neurodevelopment disorders in humans.

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Source-Eurekalert