Amalgam Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Amalgam, including details on dental fillings, dentistry, side-effects.

Mercury exposure from dental filling placement during pregnancy and low birth weight risk.

Hujoel PP, Lydon-Rochelle M, Bollen AM, Woods JS, Geurtsen W, del Aguila MA

Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-7475, USA. hujoel@u.washington.edu

Several European countries have guidelines suggesting that women should not receive mercury-containing dental amalgam fillings during pregnancy. One concern raised by several studies is that mercury exposure during pregnancy may lead to decreased birth weight. A population-based, case-control study was designed to investigate whether placement of mercury-containing fillings in 1993-2000 during pregnancy increased the low-birth-weight risk. Cases and controls were sampled from enrollees of a dental insurance plan with live singleton births in Washington State; 1,117 women with low-birth-weight infants (< 2,500 g) were compared with a random sample of 4,468 women with infants weighing 2,500 g or more. The results indicated that 13% of a dentally insured population had one or more restorative procedures during pregnancy that, regardless of chemical composition, did not increase the low-birth-weight risk (odds ratio = 0.96, 95% confidence interval: 0.88, 1.05). The 4.9% of the women (n = 249) who had at least one mercury-containing amalgam filling during pregnancy were not at an increased risk for a low-birth-weight infant (odds ratio = 0.75, 95% confidence interval: 0.45, 1.26) and neither were women who had 4-11 amalgam fillings placed (odds ratio = 1.00, 95% confidence interval: 0.27, 3.68). This study found no evidence that mercury-containing dental fillings placed during pregnancy increased low-birth-weight risk.

Published 31 March 2005 in Am J Epidemiol, 161(8): 734-40.
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