Recent research has shown that heavy cannabis use during pregnancy can harm the fetus. Less clear, however, is the effect of the drug on child development in kids born to women who used marijuana while pregnant.
As cannabis use becomes more prevalent, especially during pregnancy, it’s important to learn what the potential risk factors are of using the drug, said Yasmin Hurd, a neuroscientist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York and the lead author of the new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“It’s not that I think that cannabis is a horrible thing,” she said. “But it is a drug that we need to make sure we understand which individuals may be more vulnerable.”
Hurd and her colleagues found that children born to women who used cannabis while pregnant had higher levels of a stress hormone called cortisol in hair samples, compared with children born to nonusers. When given a behavioral assessment, children of women who used during their pregnancy had increased anxiety and hyperactivity.