PRENATAL EXPOSURE TO SEX-HORMONES - A CASE-CONTROL STUDY

The adverse effect of therapeutic use of sex hormones during pregnancy inducing pseudohermaphroditism in female offspring has been well know n since the early 1950s. Consequently there has been great concern abo ut the potential effects on the offspring of women who use these agent s during gestation. Some studies have reported an association, particu larly of oral contraceptives used during pregnancy, with specific type s of congenital defects, while this was not observed in other studies. Here we present the results of a large case-control study on the effe ct of prenatal exposure to each type of sex hormone. Cases were those malformed infants of unknown cause, that is, excluding syndromes and t hose cases with defects that have dominant or recessive inheritance, a nd those due to recognized teratogens. The controls were selected from the same population as the cases and are representative of those who, had they developed malformations, would have been selected as cases. The results, after controlling potential confounder factors with diffe rent logistic regression analyses, do not support the hypothesis that prenatal exposure to sex hormones increases the risk of genital and no ngenital malformations. (C) 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.