Maternal dietary intake of fish and child neurodevelopment at 3 years: a nationwide birth cohort—The Japan Environment and Children's Study

Abstract

BackgroundResults on the association between fish intake during pregnancy and a reduction in neurodevelopmental delays in children have been inconsistent, with some reports finding an association and others finding none. Because neurodevelopmental delays are more pronounced at the age of 3 years, their association needs to be examined at this age.MethodsAfter exclusion and multiple imputation from a dataset comprising 104,057 records from the Japan Environment and Children's Study, logistic regression analysis was conducted in quintiles to evaluate the association between maternal fish intake during pregnancy and child neurodevelopment at age 3 years in 91,909 mother–child pairs. The Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ), validated in the Japan Public Health Center-Based Prospective Study for the Next Generation, was used to assess maternal fish intake during pregnancy. The Ages and Stages Questionnaires-3 was used to assess children's neurodevelopment in five domains: communication, gross motor, fine motor, problem-solving, and personal-social.ResultsConsistently lower odds were found for the highest vs. lowest quintile for the domains of communication, fine motor, problem-solving, and personal-social but not gross motor skills, with adjusted odd ratios (95% confidence intervals) of 0.89 (0.80–0.998), 0.90 (0.83–0.97), 0.86 (0.80–0.94), 0.87 (0.77–0.98), and 1.04 (0.94–1.16), respectively. The trend for lower odds of symptoms of neurodevelopmental delays across quintiles of higher maternal fish intake were significant for fine motor, problem-solving, and personal-social but not communication or gross motor.ConclusionsFish consumption during pregnancy may be associated with a reduced risk of neurodevelopmental delay in 3-year-olds, particularly in the fine motor, problem-solving, and personal-social domains. Continued investigation after the age of 3 could further clarify the association.