Can Smokong Marajuana When Ypu Are Pregnant Cause the Baby to Have Seizure
How Marijuana Harms a Developing Baby's Brain
Three studies in rodents suggest prenatal exposure to the drug may pose risks for infants
Marijuana has been legalized in some capacity in 31 U.S. states, in big part due to a softening stance around the potential harms of the drug and recognition of its medical benefits. As a result, cannabis has go the most commonly used illicit drug during pregnancy.
One recent written report revealed that in 2016 7 percent of meaning women in California used marijuana, with rates as high as 22 per centum among teenage mothers. In Colorado 69 pct of dispensaries recommended the drug to pregnant women to help with morning sickness.
Whereas marijuana is non a major health risk for almost adults, prenatal drug exposure tin can exist harmful to unborn babies. Previous enquiry has shown infants exposed to cannabis in the womb are 50 percent more likely to have a lower birth weight. At present three new studies presented in November at the Society for Neuroscience annual coming together in San Diego suggest prenatal cannabis exposure—at to the lowest degree in rodents—could have serious consequences for fetal brain development. "There's get this relaxation—in part because [marijuana] is becoming legal in many states around the country—that it's fine," says Yasmin Hurd, who is managing director of the Addiction Plant at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and was not involved in the new research. But, she adds, only because a drug is not very dangerous to adults does not mean information technology is harmless to the developing brain.
In i study researchers at Washington State University in Pullman showed rat pups built-in to mothers exposed to loftier amounts of cannabis vapor during pregnancy had problem with cognitive flexibility. Twice a day the scientists filled the pregnant rats' containers with marijuana vapor from an due east-cigarette, elevating levels of the psychoactive chemical THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) in the rats' blood to roughly the human equivalent of smoking a articulation. Afterwards the pups grew upwardly the researchers trained them on a task that measured their ability to think flexibly and larn new rules. The young rats commencement learned to follow a low-cal cue to push ane of two levers in order to receive a sugary treat. The next day, pushing only the left lever would evangelize the reward, regardless of which side the calorie-free had been on.
The rats exposed to cannabis in utero learned the first rule (following the low-cal cue) without a problem, just they took significantly longer to larn the new rule (pushing the left lever) than did rats not exposed to the drug. The cannabis-exposed rats also made many more mistakes on the 2d 24-hour interval. They would respond correctly for a couple rounds, making information technology seem like they knew the new rule, merely so they would press the wrong lever again. "It was similar something wasn't actually clicking with them," says Ryan McLaughlin, an assistant professor of integrative physiology and neuroscience at Washington State and lead author of the study, which has not yet been published. He says they never got that "'Aha!' moment, where it'due south like, 'Oh, this is what I'm supposed to do.'"
In a similar report, scientists at Auburn University in Alabama found rats born to mothers that had been injected with a depression, continuous dose of constructed cannabis during pregnancy were significantly impaired on several different retention tasks involving mazes. "The rats that were exposed to cannabinoids [chemicals like those constitute in marijuana] prenatally were performing less efficiently than the control rats" that were non exposed, says Priyanka Pinky, a graduate educatee at Auburn who conducted the research. "There was a gap in the acquisition of the retention and the consolidation of the memory."
The immature rats whose mothers were dosed with the drug as well had abnormalities in the hippocampus, the encephalon's main memory middle. Specifically, they had difficulty creating new connections between neurons—the basis for forming new memories. The researchers recollect the differences in the hippocampus stem from changes in levels of glutamate, the encephalon'south main excitatory neurochemical involved in learning and retentivity.
In the third report researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Ferrara in Italia again found impairments in retentiveness and changes in levels of glutamate in the brains of rats exposed to THC in the womb. They also discovered an increase in another molecule in the brain, which they think may be the missing link between prenatal cannabis exposure, glutamate and cognitive impairments: kynurenic acid. This chemical acts like a puppet principal in the brain, regulating glutamate and other of import neurochemicals; high levels of the molecule outcome in lower glutamate levels. Kynurenic acid has likewise previously been implicated in cognitive impairments in both people and animals.
"We call back that prenatal marijuana exposure can induce an increase in kynurenic acid, and this may be responsible for the cerebral impairment observed in the offspring of marijuana users," says Sarah Beggiato, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Ferrara in Italy and co-author of the study. "Why is glutamate going downwardly? Information technology's because kynurenic acid is going upwards." The scientists are now researching drugs that cake the acid'due south synthesis, which may help defend against the problems associated with prenatal cannabis exposure.
The findings, which are in rodents, may non necessarily translate to humans. Mount Sinai's Hurd, who has been researching the furnishings of marijuana on the developing brain in both humans and animals for 15 years, says the new studies do not reveal annihilation "shockingly new." Simply they show "that there are indeed multiple systems being afflicted," she says, "and given that more meaning women today are starting to smoke marijuana, it's really important for us to get that word out."
Can Smokong Marajuana When Ypu Are Pregnant Cause the Baby to Have Seizure
Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-marijuana-harms-a-developing-babys-brain/
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