Discuss Bipolar
Blog to discuss being Bipolar
Prenatal exposure to tobacco smoke is associated with an increased risk for psychiatric disorders in adolescence and young adulthood, researchers have found.
“Smoking during pregnancy has many harmful effects on the growing fetus, including impairment of fetal growth,” explain Mikael Ekblad (Turku University Hospital, Finland) and team. “In recent years, smoking exposure has also been described to have harmful effects on the developing brain.”
To investigate whether maternal smoking during pregnancy increases the risk for psychiatric morbidity in late adolescence and young adulthood, the researchers studied data on all 175,869 singleton children without major congenital abnormalities who were born in Finland between 1987 and 1989.
Information on maternal smoking was collected by midwives during antenatal care, and data on gestational age, maternal age, birth weight, parity, and other variables were derived from the Finnish Medical Birth Register.
The Finnish Hospital Discharge Register was used to identify all psychiatric diagnoses among the children through to 2007, and the Cause-of-Death Register was used to identify all those who died during the 20-year period.
Overall, 15.3% of mothers reported smoking during pregnancy and 15.0% of children received a psychiatric diagnosis resulting in hospital care during the study period.
The researchers found that, compared with children born to women who did not smoke during pregnancy, those born to women who smoked 1-9 cigarettes a day were 1.53 times more likely to develop a psychiatric disorder, while those born to women who smoked 10 or more cigarettes a day were 1.85 times more likely to develop such a disorder.
The increased risk for psychiatric disorders associated with prenatal tobacco smoke exposure remained significant after accounting for potential confounding factors, such as a family history of such conditions.
It was also significant for all psychiatric diagnoses except schizophrenia, with the strongest effects seen for behavioral and emotional disorders and those due to psychoactive substance use.
Prenatal exposure to 10 or more cigarettes a day was also associated with significantly increased total mortality, at an adjusted odds ratio of 1.69.
Ekblad and colleagues conclude in the Archives of General Psychiatry: “Prenatal smoking exposure is associated with an increased risk of psychiatric morbidity in childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood.”
They add: “It might be possible to reduce psychiatric morbidity by reducing smoking exposure during pregnancy.”
MedWire (www.medwire-news.md) is an independent clinical news service provided by Current Medicine Group, a trading division of Springer Healthcare Limited. © Springer Healthcare Ltd; 2010
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
Leave a comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.