Documents Budtz-Jørgensen, Esben 2 results

"Objectives
The aim of this prospective study was to investigate whether occupational pesticide exposure during pregnancy causes adverse effects on the reproductive development in the male infants.

Design and measurements
Pregnant women employed in greenhouses in Denmark were consecutively recruited, and 113 mother–son pairs were included. The mothers were categorized as occupationally exposed (91 sons) or unexposed (22 sons) to pesticides during pregnancy. Testicular position and volume, penile length, and position of urethral opening were determined at 3 months of age using standardized techniques. Concentrations of reproductive hormones in serum from the boys were analyzed.

Results
The prevalence of cryptorchidism at 3 months of age was 6.2% [95% confidence interval (CI), 3.0–12.4]. This prevalence was considerably higher than among Danish boys born in the Copenhagen area (1.9%; 95% CI, 1.2–3.0) examined by the same procedure. Boys of pesticide-exposed mothers showed decreased penile length, testicular volume, serum concentrations of testosterone, and inhibin B. Serum concentrations of sex hormone-binding globulin, follicle-stimulating hormone, and the luteinizing hormone:testosterone ratio were increased compared with boys of nonexposed mothers. For individual parameters, only the decreased penile length was statistically significant (p = 0.04). However, all observed effects were in the anticipated direction, and a joint multivariate test showed that this finding had a p-value of 0.012.

Conclusions
Our findings suggest an adverse effect of maternal occupational pesticide exposure on reproductive development in the sons despite current greenhouse safeguards and special measures to protect pregnant women."

"Objectives
Determining exposure to occupational factors by workers' job titles is extensively used in epidemiological research. However, the correspondence of findings regarding associations to health between job exposure matrices (JEMs) and individual-level exposure data is largely unknown. We set out to examine the prospective associations of physical work demands and psychosocial working conditions with musculoskeletal pain, comparing JEMs with individual-level self-reported exposures.
Methods
We analysed data of 8132 participants from the Work Environment and Health in Denmark cohort study. Using random intercept multilevel modelling, we constructed age-specific and sex-specific JEMs estimating predicted exposures in job groups. We analysed associations between working conditions (individual and JEM level) at baseline and musculoskeletal pain at follow-up using multilevel modelling stratified by sex, adjusting for age, education and baseline pain.
Results
Any consistent associations present in the individual-level analysis were also found in the JEM-level analysis. Higher pain levels at follow-up was seen for employees with higher baseline physical work demands, women exposed to violence and men with lower decision authority, whether measured at the individual or JEM level. Higher JEM-level quantitative demands were associated with less pain, but no association was seen at the individual level.
Conclusions
We found predominately comparable prospective associations between working conditions and pain, whether using JEMs or individual level exposures, with the exception of quantitative demands. The results suggest that, with few notable exceptions, findings obtained using JEMs may be comparable with those obtained when using self-reported exposures."