a look at infants born to mothers with cannabis use disorder
medical record analysis over a 10-year period finds more babies had preterm births, low birth weight and small size.
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investigators compared the 20,237 women with a control group of 40,474 mother-infant pairs who had similar demographics and maternal health factors. /
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amid a rising rate of cannabis use disorder (cud) among women in california, their babies seem to be experiencing more adverse outcomes than mothers who do not have cud.
prenatal cud “appears to be associated with escalated odds of major adverse neonatal outcomes,”states the study abstract.
the retrospective study out of the university of california san diego (ucsd), funded by the national institute on drug abuse, considered 4.8 million mothers who delivered live, single births in the state between 2001 and 2012, according to ucsd. of the records reviewed, investigators identified 20,237 women with a cud diagnosis who were discharged following delivery.
published online in addiction, study authors suggest the actual incidence of cud “is likely higher than reported numbers.”
investigators compared the 20,237 women with a control group of 40,474 mother-infant pairs who had similar demographics and maternal health factors, including other substance use disorder diagnoses and tobacco use. previous findings suggest “concurrent tobacco use is common among pregnant women who use cannabis,” notes a statement from nida.
in the current study, researchers found that babies born to women with cud “were more likely to be born preterm, have a low birth weight and be small for their gestational age.” the aforementioned are “all factors that can require greater or more intense medical care or presage later health issues,” study authors point out.
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although rare, affecting less than one per cent of either the cud or the control group, investigators also witnessed that the risk of infant mortality was greater for the cud group of mothers than those who did not have the condition.
“these infants were 35 per cent more likely to die within a year of birth than infants in the control group,” reports ucsd, but adds that those infants were also less likely to be hospitalized within the first year of life.
notes the study, “compared with infants whose mothers were non‐hispanic white, infants whose mothers were hispanic had greater odds of hospitalization and death and infants whose mothers were non‐hispanic black had greater odds of being small for gestational age in association with prenatal cud.”
the incidence of smaller babies born prior to full term comes at a time when medical records show cud diagnoses increased from 2.8 to 6.9 per 1,000 deliveries between 2002 and 2012.
a review published in 2015 indicated most studies showed two to five per cent of self-reported cannabis use during pregnancy.
another study two years later found about 20 per cent of pregnant women 24 and younger screened positive for cannabis, although self-reporting of use was about half that level.
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published in 2002, a british study of approximately 12,000 women “suggests that the use of cannabis during pregnancy was not associated with increased risk of perinatal mortality or morbidity in this sample. however, frequent and regular use of cannabis throughout pregnancy may be associated with small, but statistically detectable, decrements in birth weight,” it notes.
and earlier this year, research out of children’s hospital colorado demonstrated that thc stays in breast milk for up to six weeks.
findings of the ucsd study support “the recommendation that health professionals screen for and address cuds in their pregnant clients — to protect both their health and potentially the health of their infants,” says yuyan shi, ph.d., lead author and associate professor at ucsd’s herbert wertheim school of public health.
researchers say helpful strategies could include screening for cannabis or related disorders and providing counsel on marijuana use during pregnancy.
“while we cannot establish that cannabis use caused negative outcomes in this study, these data reinforce the case for caution around using cannabis during pregnancy,” nida director dr. nora volkow says in a statement from the agency.
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