ArticleToxics2022
Prenatal Mercury Exposure and Infant Weight Trajectories in a UK Observational Birth Cohort.
Article in Toxics, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 8 citations in OpenAlex.
- Association of maternal exposure to trace elements and toxic metals with repeated measurements of foetal and early-childhood growth: a systematic review.Occupational and environmental medicine · 2025Pooled it
- Prenatal exposure to essential and toxic elements in relation to infant growth trajectories.Environmental health : a global access science source · 2026Article
- Prenatal exposure to metals and metal mixtures influences birth weight in affected populations in the Republic of Suriname, South America.Environmental research · 2025Article
- Association of pre-and postnatal mercury exposure with cardiometabolic risk factors in children: the role of the telomere length and telomerase reverse transcriptase polymorphisms.Environment international · 2025Article
- Article
- Maternal inflammatory, lipid and metabolic markers and associations with birth and breastfeeding outcomes.Frontiers in nutrition · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Mercury is highly toxic metal found in trace quantities in common foods. There is concern that exposure during pregnancy could impair infant development. Epidemiological evidence is mixed, but few studies have examined postnatal growth. Differences in nutrition, exposures, and the living environment after birth may make it easier to detect a negative impact from mercury toxicity on infant growth. This study includes 544 mother-child pairs from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Blood mercury was measured in early pregnancy and infant weight at 10 intervals between 4 and 61 months. Mixed-effect models were used to estimate the change in infant weight associated with prenatal mercury exposure. The estimated difference in monthly weight gain was -0.02 kg per 1 standard deviation increase in Hg (95% confidence intervals: -0.10 to 0.06 kg). When restricted to the 10th decile of Hg, the association with weight at each age level was consistently negative but with wide confidence intervals. The lack of evidence for an association may indicate that at Hg levels in this cohort (median 1.9 µg/L) there is minimal biological impact, and the effect is too small to be either clinically relevant or detectable.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.