Association of maternal iodine status during pregnancy with child verbal IQ score. (a) Continuous association, depicted as the mean child verbal IQ (black line) with 95% CI (gray area) using pooled data. Models were adjusted for gestational age, child sex, maternal ethnicity/country of birth, maternal education, parity, maternal age, prepregnancy body mass index, and smoking during pregnancy. The P value was provided by an ANOVA test of the null hypothesis that mean child verbal IQ score was similar across the whole range of the natural logarithm of UI/Creat. (b and c) Forest plots of (b) UI/Creat <150 µg/g (“deficiency”) and (c) UI/Creat ≥500 µg/g (“excess”) compared with the reference group of UI/Creat ≥150 to <500 µg/g (“sufficient”), depicted as effect estimate (dot) with 95% CI per cohort and overall as estimated by random-effects meta-analysis (diamond). Coef, coefficient.