Journal of Neonatal Biology

Maternal Drug Use and Neonatal Neurodevelopmental Outcomes

Orvar Finnstrom^* Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota Health Sciences Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
^*Correspondence: Orvar Finnstrom, Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota Health Sciences Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, Email:

Received: 29-Jun-2022, Manuscript No. JNB-22-17790; Editor assigned: 04-Jul-2022, Pre QC No. JNB-22-17790(PQ); Reviewed: 21-Jul-2022, QC No. JNB-22-17790; Revised: 26-Jul-2022, Manuscript No. JNB-22-17790(R); Published: 04-Aug-2022, DOI: 10.35248/2167-0897.22.11.358

Description

Growth delay in fetuses and newborns can cause long-term neurological and mental illness. Intrauterine growth retardation has a variety of reasons; however aetiology that has been put out involves maternal medications. It can be challenging to tell in many cases whether the drugs the mother is taking are to blame for her condition or the drugs themselves for the child's growth retardation. Length appears to be less negatively impacted than weight and FOC. Contrary to immunotherapy, combination medication therapy, such as anticonvulsant medicines, is associated with a higher risk of teratology, growth retardation, and lower IQ. Drugs used during pregnancy can potentially have a negative impact on neurobehavioral. There is some evidence that this anomalous behaviour is a reflection of an in utero brain damage, which later manifests as poor organizational, perceptual, reading, and arithmetic skills or even mental retardation, even if symptoms may be limited to the first few months of life.

Examined the caregiving environment and neurodevelopmental trends in 20 infants who had been exposed to cocaine during pregnancy and 20 newborns who had not. Four occasions were used to administer the Brazelton Scale. When compared to comparison newborns, drug-exposed infants showed less optimum neurodevelopment at birth, although by 6 weeks, only changes in autonomic stability were noticeable. The environment's child-centeredness was favorably correlated with neurodevelopmental performance. Support reduced stress in both groups, but drug-free moms experienced the benefit more strongly. Findings confirm the necessity of taking neurodevelopmental recovery and the caring environment into account when evaluating the developmental outcomes of infants who have been exposed to drugs.

Pregnant women are increasingly using cannabis, and many of them do so throughout their pregnancies. Numerous countries have legalized marijuana for recreational use, raising concerns about possible negative effects on developing children from prenatal exposure. We conduct a retrospective analysis of all live births in Ontario, Canada, between 1 April 2007 and 31 March 2012 using the provincial birth registry, which contains data on cannabis usage during pregnancy. To determine child neurodevelopmental outcomes, we link pregnancy and birth data to provincial health administrative databases. We explore correlations between prenatal cannabis usage and child neurodevelopment using Cox proportional hazards regression models and matching approaches to account for confounding. We discover a link between maternal cannabis use during pregnancy and the likelihood that the child would have autistic spectrum disorder. Children who had exposure had a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder at a rate of 4.00 per 1,000 personyears, compared to 2.42 for children who had not been exposed. In the matched cohort, the fully adjusted hazard ratio was 1.51 (95% confidence interval: 1.17–1.96). Though less statistically significant, there was a greater frequency of intellectual disability and learning difficulties in children of women who used cannabis when they were pregnant. We stress the need for a cautious interpretation of these results given the possibility of lingering confounding.

The randomized double-blind trial is the gold standard in clinical medicine. However, there are a lot of circumstances where this approach is inappropriate due to moral considerations. One such instance relates to drug usage during pregnancy and the result of the pregnancy. Randomizing pregnant or planning-to-get pregnant women, whether they are ill or healthy, to the administration of a particular medicine or a placebo would be immoral. Therefore, when exposure (use of drugs) happens voluntarily, conclusions must be based on nonrandomized epidemiological studies. Such studies are subject to criticism for a variety of reasons, including bias in the exposure or outcome data and difficulty in the control of confounding, particularly when moderate effects are observed.

The occurrence of, for example, congenital abnormalities in the kids may be correlated with maternal usage of a particular drug (such as an antidepressant), but the correlation may not be caused by the drug's effects. Confounding will exist if a factor directly influences both exposure and result; this requires correction. Maternal age can be used as a confounder in the analysis of maternal smoking and the risk for Down syndrome to illustrate this issue schematically. According to a rough analysis, maternal smoking had an Odds Ratio (OR) of 0.77 in favor of lowering the risk of Down syndrome. The OR decreases to 0.94 and is far from statistically significant if one makes adjustments for the fact that pregnant women smoke less with increasing age at delivery and that the risk for Down syndrome rises with woman's age. If a drug is exposed to, whose use rises with maternal age, and Down syndrome is the result, the reverse effect is attained. The crude OR will rise as a result. The effect can go away if the mother age is taken into account. These two examples also demonstrate that, depending on whether the confounder has an opposite or similar influence on exposure and outcome, confounding can lead to estimates of risk that are either too low or too high.

In recent years, there has been a strong correlation between maternal drug use both illicit and prescribed and severe neonatal morbidity, as well as noticeably increased rates of drug exposure and neonatal abstinence syndrome. According to data, opioid analgesics may have played a role in the rise in neonatal abstinence syndrome and prenatal drug exposure in Washington State. Our findings highlight the need for doctors to screen expectant women for the use of illegal and prescribed drugs and to limit the use of opioid analgesics during pregnancy in accordance with existing recommendations.