Likely no tie between male birth defect, chemical: MedlinePlus

Likely no tie between male birth defect, chemical

URL of this page: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_107529.html(*this news item will not be available after 04/10/2011)

Monday, January 10, 2011
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Birth Defects
Drinking Water
Environmental Health
By Leigh Krietsch Boerner

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - There's no link between pregnant women drinking water with a chemical linked to disinfectants and the rate of a particular male birth defect, says a study in today's issue of the journal Pediatrics.

The birth defect is hypospadias, where the opening of the urethra is on the underside of the penis instead of at the tip. It affects roughly one in 200 newborn boys. The chemicals studied, trihalomethanes, come from the breakdown of disinfectants commonly used to treat drinking water, such as chlorine.

"We didn't find a link between the (chemical) concentration in the water and the risk of hypospadias," said Dr. Paul Elliott, Professor of Environmental Epidemiology at Imperial College London, and an author on the study.

High levels of these compounds can cause deformed genitals in lab rats. Several past studies have looked at a possible connection between the chemical and the condition in humans, but were inconclusive.

The study asked 471 mothers of boys with the birth defect and 490 mothers of unaffected boys how much water they drank during their pregnancies.

The EPA limits the amount of these chemicals in drinking water to less than 80 parts per billion. While this study was about water supplies in England, typical concentrations in the US are around 45 parts per billion.

The scientists figured out how much trihalomethane was in the water by using concentrations from local water companies, then matched the numbers with where each woman lived.

The scientists did note a difference in the two groups-women who had sons with the birth defect drank more tap water, and more total water, than those without. Women who drank the most tap water, over one liter a day, had a 70 percent higher risk of having a baby with hypospadias over women who drank no tap water.

That potential link still means that the rate of hypospadias is very low. And the findings don't mean that drinking more water causes hypospadias, said Dr. John Reif, professor of epidemiology at Colorado State in Fort Collins.

Instead, they "raise some interesting questions that should be followed up by subsequent studies."

Drinking enough water is important during pregnancy, and both Elliot and Reif urge pregnant women not to cut their water consumption based on this finding.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/cxXOG Pediatrics, online January 10, 2011.
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Likely no tie between male birth defect, chemical: MedlinePlus