Health News: Local research updates
GoLocalProv Health Team
Health News: Local research updates
Research conducted at Women & Infants Hospital is featured in the May issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Kristen C. Stone, Ph.D., of the Brown Center for the Study of Children at Risk, Women and Infants Hospital, and colleagues assessed 808 children whose mothers provided information about prenatal care, sociodemographics and their children’s sleep and behavior problems, as well as substance exposure during pregnancy.
Children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy appear to have more sleep problems throughout the first 12 years of life, and those whose mothers took a certain type of antidepressant may be more likely to have some behavior problems at age 3, according to two reports in the theme issue. Of the five substances assessed—cocaine, opiate, marijuana, alcohol and nicotine—only prenatal exposure to nicotine was associated with sleep problems in children. “Higher levels of prenatal nicotine exposure predicted more sleep problems, specifically difficulty falling and staying asleep from one month to 12 years,” the authors write.
“Targeting of this group of children for educational and behavioral efforts to prevent and treat sleep problems is merited given that good sleep may serve as a protective factor for other developmental outcomes,” they conclude.
In an accompanying editorial, Gideon Koren, M.D., and Irena Nulman, M.D., of the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, write that “since the thalidomide era, there are concerns regarding potential adverse effects of drug and chemical exposure on the developing fetus in pregnancy, causing physicians and expectant mothers high levels of anxiety toward drugs, even in life-threatening conditions.”
“Because pregnant women will never be randomized to exposure to antidepressants or recreational drugs, high-quality observational investigations, such as those by ... Stone and colleagues, will be critical in distinguishing associations from causation in the field of maternal-fetal toxicology,” they conclude.