Do Thyroid Disrupting Chemicals Influence Foetal Development during Pregnancy.pdfVIP

SAGE-Hindawi Access to Research Journal of Thyroid Research Volume 2011, Article ID 342189, 14 pages doi:10.4061/2011/342189 Review Article Do Thyroid Disrupting Chemicals Influence Foetal Development during Pregnancy? Marie-Louise Hartoft-Nielsen,1 Malene Boas,2 Sofie Bliddal,1 ˚ 1 Aase Krogh Rasmussen, Katharina Main,2 and Ulla Feldt-Rasmussen1 1 Department of Medical Endocrinology PE-2131, Rigshospitalet, University Hospital of Copenhagen, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark 2 Department of Growth and Reproduction, Rigshospitalet, University Hospital of Copenhagen, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark Correspondence should be addressed to Marie-Louise Hartoft-Nielsen, d305618@dadlnet.dk Received 15 March 2011; Revised 13 May 2011; Accepted 2 June 2011 Academic Editor: Bijay Vaidya Copyright © 2011 Marie-Louise Hartoft-Nielsen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Maternal euthyroidism during pregnancy is crucial for normal development and, in particular, neurodevelopment of the foetus. Up to 3.5 percent of pregnant women suffer from hypothyroidism. Industrial use of various chemicals—endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs)—has been shown to cause almost constant exposure of humans with possible harmful influence on health and hormone regulation. EDCs may affect thyroid hormone homeostasis by different mechanisms, and though the effect of each chemical seems scarce, the added effects may cause inappropriate consequences on, for example, foetal neurodevelopmen