Some women are using marijuana during pregnancy to control nausea. I have advised against this practice, recommending acupuncture and herbal medicine to use instead. Here is an interesting study that shows that maternal marijuana use is associated with an increased risk of having small-for-gestational-age (SGA) babies and of an increase in neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admissions.
Maternal Marijuana Use Tied to Higher Risk of SGA Babies, NICU Admission
Maternal marijuana use is associated with an increased risk of having small-for-gestational-age (SGA) babies and of neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admission, according to a new study.
The US Drug Enforcement Agency expects marijuana use to rise with legalization, the study team notes, and it’s known that the main active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol, can cross the placenta.
“The complex interplay between marijuana use, polysubstance use, concurrent tobacco use and adverse perinatal outcome is unknown,” they write in the Journal of Perinatology, online September 24.
To investigate, Dr. Carri R Warshak of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio and colleagues performed a retrospective cohort study of all the deliveries of singleton pregnancies from 2008 until 2011 at their medical center.
Study participants were designated as marijuana users if they reported use during prenatal care or delivery or if they had a positive toxicology screen.
Excluding women with a history of polysubstance abuse, 361 (5.6%) of 6,468 participants were designated as marijuana users. Women who used marijuana were slightly younger than non-users and had more than twice the rate of tobacco use.
There were no significant differences between users and nonusers in the risk of pre-eclampsia, preterm delivery, stillbirth, unplanned Cesarean delivery, perinatal mortality, or major fetal anomalies.
However, marijuana users had higher rates of SGA infants (19% vs. 11%, p<0.001). Although the difference was not significant after Bonferroni correction, offspring of marijuana users also had higher rates of NICU admission (17.2% vs. 12.5%, p=0.01).
When adjusting for confounder, marijuana use was significantly associated with increased risks of NICU admission (adjusted OR, 1.54) and SGA (aOR, 1.30) in women who did not smoke tobacco.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1QrqItV
J Perinatol 2015.
