Organochlorine Pesticides and Male Genital Anomalies in the Child Health and Development Studies Rajiv Bhatia,1 Rita Shiau,1 Myrto Petreas,2 June M. Weintraub,1 Lili Farhang,1,3 and Brenda Eskenazi4 1San Francisco Department of Public Health, San Francisco, California, USA; 2Hazardous Materials Laboratory, Department of Toxic Substances Control, California Environmental Protection Agency, Berkeley, California, USA; 3Public Health Institute, Berkeley, California, USA; 4Center for Children's Environmental Health Research, School of Public Health, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA Abstract Increasing rates of cryptorchidism and hypospadias in human populations may be caused by exogenous environmental agents. We conducted a case-control study of serum levels of p,p´-dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and its major metabolite, p,p´-dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE) , and cryptorchidism and hypospadias in the Child Health and Development Study, a longitudinal cohort of pregnancies that occurred between 1959 and 1967, a period when DDT was produced and used in the United States. Serum was available from the mothers of 75 male children born with cryptorchidism, 66 with hypospadias, and 4 with both conditions. We randomly selected 283 controls from the cohort of women whose male babies were born without either of these conditions. Overall, we observed no statistically significant relationships or trends between outcomes and serum measures. After adjusting for maternal race, triglyceride level, and cholesterol level, compared with boys whose mothers had serum DDE levels < 27.0 ng/mL, boys whose mothers had serum DDE levels 61.0 ng/mL had odds ratios of 1.34 [95% confidence interval (CI) , 0.51-3.48] for cryptorchidism and 1.18 (95% CI, 0.46-3.02) for hypospadias. For DDT, compared with boys whose mothers had serum DDT levels < 10.0 ng/mL, boys whose mothers had serum DDT levels 20.0 ng/mL had adjusted odds ratios of 1.01 (95% CI, 0.44-2.28) for cryptorchidism and 0.79 (95% CI, 0.33-1.89) for hypospadias. This study does not support an association of DDT or DDE and hypospadias or cryptorchidism. Key words: cryptorchidism, DDE, DDT, hypospadias, insecticides, male genital anomalies, organochlorine, pregnancy. Environ Health Perspect 113:220-224 (2005) . doi:10.1289/ehp.7382 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 4 November 2004] Address correspondence to J.M. Weintraub, San Francisco Department of Public Health, 1390 Market St., Suite 910, San Francisco, CA 94102 USA. Telephone: (415) 252-3800. Fax: (415) 252-3964. E-mail: june.weintraub@sfdph.org We thank B. van den Berg and B. Cohn for making the Child Health and Development Studies (CHDS) specimens available for this study and R. Christianson for sharing her wealth of knowledge about the CHDS database. This study was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (R29 ES09042) . The authors declare they have no competing financial interests. Received 2 July 2004 ; accepted 3 November 2004. The full version of this article is available for free in HTML or PDF formats. |