UB Study Finds No Relationship Between Male Consumption of Lake Ontario Fish And Conception Delay

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Women whose partners ate Lake Ontario sport fish, known to be contaminated with residues of PCBs and pesticides, did not take longer to conceive than women whose partners didn't eat such fish, University at Buffalo researchers involved in the New York State Angler Study have found.

Many contaminants found in Great Lakes fish have been linked to adverse reproductive and developmental effects in wildlife populations that eat the fish, and these contaminants also have been found in the human male and female reproductive tracts. This is one of the first population-based studies to focus on the role of paternal contaminated-fish consumption and reproduction.

Results of the study, headed by Germaine M. Buck, Ph.D., associate professor of social and preventive medicine in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, appear in a recent issue [1999; 3926, section A 80] of Environmental Research.

"We found no evidence of an adverse effect of Lake Ontario fish consumption on risk of conception delay," Buck said. "However, the findings are relevant only for couples with a known time-to-pregnancy. Women who did not conceive, of which there were many, or who didn't know how long it took them to conceive, aren't included in this study."

The New York State Angler Study was undertaken in 1991 to determine the health consequences of eating fish from Lake Ontario, known to be the most polluted of the Great Lakes. The study has assembled a population-based cohort of licensed anglers and their spouses or partners from 16 counties surrounding Lake Ontario, involving 10,517 men and 7,477 women who were between the ages of 18 and 40 when the study began.

The sample for this investigation was composed of 785 women who had had a pregnancy between 1991-93, and for whom the investigators had complete information on paternal fish consumption and time-to-pregnancy.

Conception delay was defined as requiring more than 12 menstrual cycles with unprotected intercourse to achieve pregnancy. This data was analyzed in relation to the father's Lake Ontario fish consumption, based on three measures: the number of fish meals consumed in 1991, the number of years of eating fish from Lake Ontario between 1955-91, and the PCB index, calculated from the frequency, type and amount of fish eaten.

Results showed that 78 percent of the women became pregnant in less than six months, indicating no conception delay. Sixty-six percent of fathers reported eating Lake Ontario fish between 1955-91, while only 38 percent said they had eaten it during 1991.

Results showed that in this study group, none of the measures of paternal fish consumption resulted in an increased risk of delayed conception, Buck said. The findings held up even after restricting the analysis to men whose partners ate no Lake Ontario fish to minimize the effect of female fish consumption, she said.

Buck cautioned against construing these results to mean that eating Lake Ontario fish has no adverse effects on reproduction, however. (A 1997 UB study of female anglers and partners of male anglers from the full cohort found that eating Lake Ontario fish was associated with shortened menstrual cycles.)

"We need prospective studies of paternal fish consumption in relation to the full range of reproductive outcomes, and corroboration from other angler populations, before we can arrive at a detailed assessment of male-mediated risks," she said.

Additional researchers on the study were Pauline Mendola, Ph.D., and John Vena, Ph.D., of the UB Department of Social and Preventive Medicine; Lowell Sever, Ph.D., of the Battelle Centers for Public Health Research and Evaluation in Seattle, and Hebe Greizerstein, Ph.D., James Olson, Ph.D., and Frank D. Stephen, Ph.D., all of the UB Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. (Mendola is now with the Environmental Protection Agency.)

The study was funded in part through grants from the Great Lakes Protection Fund and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.