Maternal dietary intake of fish and PUFAs and child neurodevelopment at 6 months and 1 year of age: A nationwide birth cohort - The Japan Environment and Children's Study (JECS)

Kei Hamazaki, Kenta Matsumura, Akiko Tsuchida, Haruka Kasamatsu, Tomomi Tanaka, Mika Ito, Hidekuni Inadera, Michihiro Kamijima, Shin Yamazaki, Yukihiro Ohya, Reiko Kishi, Nobuo Yaegashi, Koichi Hashimoto, Chisato Mori, Shuichi Ito, Zentaro Yamagata, Takeo Nakayama, Hiroyasu Iso, Masayuki Shima, Youichi KurozawaNarufumi Suganuma, Koichi Kusuhara, Takahiko Katoh

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

11 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Background: Although emerging evidence indicates a relation between maternal intake of fish and improved child neurodevelopment, the results are inconsistent. Objectives: This study investigated whether dietary consumption of fish during pregnancy is associated with offspring neurodevelopment at age 6 mo and 1 y. As exploratory research, we also examined the association between consumption of PUFAs and neurodevelopment at the same time points. Methods: After exclusion and multiple imputation from a dataset comprising 104,065 records from the Japan Environment and Children's Study, we evaluated 81,697 and 77,751 mother-child pairs at age 6 mo and 1 y, respectively. Results: Maternal fish intake during pregnancy was independently associated with reduced risk of delay in problem-solving at age 6 mo (lowest compared with highest quintile OR = 0.88; 95% CI: 0.79, 0.99; P-trend = 0.01) and in fine motor skills (highest quintile OR = 0.90; 95% CI: 0.81, 0.99; P-trend = 0.02) and problem-solving (fourth quintile OR = 0.89; 95% CI: 0.81, 0.98; and highest quintile OR = 0.90; 95% CI: 0.81, 0.99; P-trend = 0.005) at age 1 y. Dietary intake of total n-3 PUFAs was associated with reduced risk of delay in fine motor skills at 6 mo, and in fine motor skills and problem-solving at 1 y. Dietary intake of total n-6 PUFAs was associated with reduced risk of delay in communication and fine motor skills at 6 mo, and in gross motor skills, fine motor skills, and problem-solving at 1 y. In contrast, the dietary n-6/n-3 ratio was positively associated with increased risk of delay in problem-solving at 1 y. Conclusions: The results of this study suggest there might be beneficial effects of fish intake during pregnancy on some domains of child psychomotor development and this effect might be partially explained by PUFA intake from fish. Trial registration: UMIN000030786.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1295-1303
Number of pages9
JournalAmerican Journal of Clinical Nutrition
Volume112
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020 Nov 1

Keywords

  • fish
  • infant
  • neurodevelopment
  • polyunsaturated fatty acids
  • pregnancy

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Medicine (miscellaneous)
  • Nutrition and Dietetics

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