Prenatal salivary sex hormone levels and birth-weight-for-gestational age

Objectiveto determine whether prenatal sex hormones from maternal saliva are associated with birth-weight-for-gestational age.study designwe measured salivary progesterone, testosterone, estradiol, dehydroepiandrosterone (dhea), and cortisone in 504 pregnant women in a mexico city cohort. we performed linear and modified poisson regression to examine associations of log-transformed hormones with birth-weight-for-gestational age z-scores and the risk of small-for-gestational age (sga) and large-for-gestational age (lga) adjusting for maternal age, sex, bmi, parity, smoking, education, and socioeconomic status.resultsin total, 15% of infants were sga and 2% were lga. each interquartile range increment in testosterone/estradiol ratio was associated with a 0.12 decrement in birth-weight-for-gestational age z-score (95% ci: −0.27 to −0.02) and a 50% higher risk of sga versus appropriate-for-gestational age (aga) (95% ci: 1.13–1.99).conclusionhigher salivary testosterone/estradiol ratios may affect fetal growth, and identifying the predictors of hormone levels may be important to optimizing fetal growth.