Levels of organochlorines and lipids across pregnancy, delivery and postpartum periods in women from Northern Norway

The objective of this study was to investigate changes in the levels of common organochlorines (OCs) and lipids in maternal serum during and after pregnancy. A subset of 50 pregnant women from the North Norwegian Mother-and-Child Study was included in this study. Blood samples were collected during the 2(nd) trimester and postpartum (Day 3 and 6 weeks) in different regions of Northern Norway, and were analyzed for the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) suite of OC contaminants. During the gestational period, both lipids and wet-weight OC levels peaked at birth and were the lowest at 6 weeks postpartum. When the OC concentrations were lipid-adjusted, this peaking was no longer evident. Wet-weight concentrations of OCs appear to be driven by the physiological lipid profiles and are interpreted to constitute biomarkers of lipidemia. It is suggested that this observation may have implications for the biomonitoring of individuals at risk of Type 2 diabetes. Both age and parity were strong predictors for the OCs measured, but no consistent association with body mass index (BMI) was evident. Independent of lipid-adjustment, all compounds were positively and significantly correlated with each other (within and across the three collection time periods). The peaking of OCs during pregnancy suggests that the period spanning the last weeks of the 3(rd) trimester and the early postpartum days constitutes an optimum sampling window purely from the analytical perspective.