Chinese Class - Season of conception tied to school performance

WORLD / Health

Season of conception tied to school performance

(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-05-09 09:12

NEW YORK - The time of year a woman conceives may influence the future
academic performance of her child, according to research reported this
week at the Pediatric Academic Societies' annual meeting.

A pregnant woman waits for a doctor at a hospital in Warsaw, Poland,
March 14, 2007. [Reuters]

When researchers linked standardized test scores of 1,667,391 Indiana
students in grades 3 through 10 with the month in which each student had
been conceived, they found that children conceived May through August
scored significantly lower on math and language tests than children
conceived during other months of the year.

The correlation between test scores and conception season held regardless
of race, gender, and grade level.

Why might this be? According to Dr. Paul Winchester of Indiana University
School of Medicine who led the study, says the evidence points to
environmental pesticides, used most often in the summer months, as a
possible player.

The lower test scores correlated with higher levels of pesticides and
nitrates in the surface water (nearby streams and other bodies of water)
during that same time period, he told Reuters Health.

"Exposure to pesticides and nitrates can alter the hormonal milieu of the
pregnant mother and the developing fetal brain," Winchester explained in
a statement. For example, past research has linked exposure to pesticides
and nitrates to low thyroid hormone levels ("hypothyroidism") in pregnant
women and hypothyroidism in pregnancy has been tied to lower intelligence
test scores in offspring.

While the current findings do not prove that pesticides and nitrates
contribute to lower test scores, "they strongly support such a
hypothesis," Winchester said.

"A priori there should be no reasons particularly why the month of
conception should change your (test) scores," he added in an interview,
"and yet from our chain of evidence our hypothesis was that if pesticides
do alter the friendly environment of the developing fetus than that might
be reflected in lower scores. And unfortunately that's what we found."

"There is something going on" and it needs to be studied further,
Winchester concluded.

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