Estimate of prenatal exposure to mercury through umbilical cord matrices
International Journal of Development Research
Estimate of prenatal exposure to mercury through umbilical cord matrices
Received 19th September, 2020 Received in revised form 17th October, 2020 Accepted 28th November, 2020 Published online 30th December, 2020
Copyright © 2020, Maria da Conceição Nascimento Pinheiro et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Mercury concentrations in maternal and fetal tissues are used as biomarkers of prenatal exposure, however, some doubts remain regarding the matrix that can best express exposure during pregnancy. The purpose of this study was to verify the correlation of total mercury concentration between the different matrices of the umbilical cord. The study included 278 umbilical cords from pairs of mothers and newborns attended to delivery at the Itaituba/Pará/ Brazil, Public Maternity Hospital.The Total mercury concentrations (TotalHg) were determined in cord tissue (TC), in vein blood (VB) and arteries blood (AB) of the umbilical cord separately, by atomic absorption spectrophotometry. Maternal data including sociodemographicand weekly frequency fish intake and newborn outcomes arepresented. The mercury concentration measured in cord umbilical tissue in wet weigth showed strong correlation with those found in vein blood and arteries bloodsuggesting that the matrices from cord umbilical analyzed separately or together by the methodology used in this study can be used in studies that evaluate prenatal exposure to mercury.
