Pot use while pregnant - from Nature Medicine (the abstract):
Maternal cannabis use in pregnancy and child neurodevelopmental outcomes
Cannabis use in pregnancy has increased, and many women continue to use it throughout pregnancy. With the legalization of recreational cannabis in many jurisdictions, there is concern about potentially adverse childhood outcomes related to prenatal exposure. Using the provincial birth registry containing information on cannabis use during pregnancy, we perform a retrospective analysis of all live births in Ontario, Canada, between 1 April 2007 and 31 March 2012. We link pregnancy and birth data to provincial health administrative databases to ascertain child neurodevelopmental outcomes. We use matching techniques to control for confounding and Cox proportional hazards regression models to examine associations between prenatal cannabis use and child neurodevelopment. We find an association between maternal cannabis use in pregnancy and the incidence of autism spectrum disorder in the offspring. The incidence of autism spectrum disorder diagnosis was 4.00 per 1,000 person-years among children with exposure compared to 2.42 among unexposed children, and the fully adjusted hazard ratio was 1.51 (95% confidence interval: 1.17–1.96) in the matched cohort. The incidence of intellectual disability and learning disorders was higher among offspring of mothers who use cannabis in pregnancy, although less statistically robust. We emphasize a cautious interpretation of these findings given the likelihood of residual confounding.
This study has a very large sample size. Almost double the chances of autism? NBC News has a report:
Using marijuana in pregnancy may heighten baby's risk of autism
The risk of autism may be greater in babies born to women who used marijuana during pregnancy, a new study suggests.
In an analysis of data from more than 500,000 Canadian mothers and their children, researchers found a 50 percent increase in the risk of autism spectrum disorder in kids whose mothers had used cannabis while pregnant, according to the report, published Monday in Nature Medicine.
“Cannabis is not a benign drug and any use during pregnancy should be discouraged,” the study’s lead author, Daniel Corsi, an adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa and a scientist at the Children’s Hospital of Ontario Research Institute, said.
No chance of error - sample size to big for any question. Now the question is what else? We do not have a history of studied pot use - what happens to your cognitive facilities after 30 years of toking?
I think I will stick with my beer and wine and an occasional single malt.
Leave a comment