ArticleThe Science of the total environment2025
Associations between brominated and organophosphate flame retardant levels and inflammatory biomarkers in maternal blood, cord blood, and placental tissue at mid-gestation.
Article in The Science of the total environment, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Prenatal exposure to organophosphate ester flame retardants and plasticizers and maternal immune responses in three ECHO cohorts.Environmental research · 2026Article
- Epigenome-wide association analysis of prenatal organophosphate ester flame retardant exposure in maternal blood implicates maternal immune and neuronal epigenetic alterations.Environment international · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectivePrenatal exposures to flame retardants (FRs), including legacy polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and alternative organophosphate FRs (OPFRs), are associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes. In animal and cell models, inflammation has been proposed as a potential pathway of FR-toxicity; however, data in humans is limited. In this study, we assessed whether levels of FRs are associated with diverse inflammatory biomarkers, reflecting potential mediating pathways. We leveraged mid-gestation maternal and fetal biospecimens, a timepoint that is often difficult to study due to ethical challenges. MATERIAL AND
methodsParticipants in this study included a demographically diverse group of pregnant women undergoing elective mid-pregnancy terminations and for whom measurements of maternal OPFRs and PBDEs and maternal and fetal inflammation biomarkers were available (N = 65). Four PBDEs (BDE-47, BDE-99, BDE-100, BDE-153) and four OPFRs (BCEP, BCIPP, BDCIPP, DPHP) were quantified via mass spectrometry in mid-gestation maternal serum and urine samples, respectively. We measured 20 unique cytokines in matched maternal serum, cord blood, and placental tissue. We used quantile g-computation to assess mixture effects and linear regression to assess associations between individual FRs and cytokines. All models were adjusted for gestational age at time of sample collection, maternal age, education, and insurance.
resultsA one-quartile increase in the mixture of PBDEs alone was positively associated with most maternal inflammatory mediators, including CCL-17 (Ѱ = 0.22, 95 % CI = 0.02, 0.42) and CCL-2 (Ѱ = 0.21, 95 % CI = 0.06, 0.37). Additionally, a one-quartile increase in the combined mixture of PBDEs and OPFRs was associated with increases in maternal serum levels of CCL-2, CCL-3, CC-17, and CCL-22. In contrast, BDE-47 and BDE-100 were individually associated with reductions in placental CCL-2 (β = -0.59, 95 % CI = -1.08, -0.1; β = -0.46, 95 % CI = -0.84, -0.07, respectively). No significant associations between levels of FRs in cord blood and cytokines were observed.
conclusionPrenatal exposure to FRs, particularly PBDEs, was significantly associated with differences in biomarkers of inflammation in maternal serum during mid-pregnancy.
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.