Prenatal environmental risk for adolescent attention, thought, and substance use problems: A mixtures approach to...

Prospective studies suggest that prenatal exposure to chemical neurotoxicants and maternal stress increase risk for psychiatric problems. However, most studies have focused on childhood outcomes, leaving adolescence-a critical period for the emergence or worsening of psychiatric symptoms-relatively understudied. The complexity of prenatal coexposures and adolescent psychiatric comorbidities, particularly among structurally marginalized populations with high exposure burdens, remains poorly understood.

We aimed to investigate correlated features in prenatal chemical and psychosocial exposures and in adolescent behavioral outcomes in a sample of economically disadvantaged urban youth.

Principal Component Pursuit, a pattern recognition technique, coupled with factor analysis identified profiles of prenatal chemical and psychosocial exposures and of adolescent behavioral outcomes. Linear regression tested associations between exposure and behavioral profiles, accounting for potential confounders.

Three prenatal exposure profiles were identified: one combining exposure to air pollutants, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons-DNA adducts, and psychosocial stressors, and two others separating exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals by molecular weight. Three adolescent behavioral profiles reflected two phenotypes: one characterized by attention problems only; two others characterized by attention, thought, substance use, and self-control problems, differentiated by informant (self vs. parent). The prenatal exposure profile involving air pollution and stress was associated with the phenotype of self-reported attention, thought, substance use, and self-control problems (β = 0.21, 95% confidence interval = 0.02, 0.40).

Principal Component Pursuit identified consistent patterns of multidimensional prenatal exposures and adolescent behavioral symptoms. Results support prior studies linking prenatal exposures associated with economic disadvantage to complex, self-reported transdiagnostic psychiatric problems in adolescence.