Pregnancy and Substance Abuse

Substance abuse is a worldwide problem that affects many people, regardless of societal level, gender and age. As defined by the World Health Organization it's the use of harmful psychoactive substances - be it drugs or alcohol - that can lead to a dependency or strong desire to take the drug without concern of consequences. Some of the most commonly abused substances include alcohol, cocaine, heroin and tabacco. One major problem is the use of these controlled substances during pregnancy. It's been shown that using certain drugs in this time period significantly increases the chances for birth defects, premature babies, underweight babies and still born births. This outcome lies on the fact that almost all drugs are known to cross the placenta and have some degree of effect upon the fetus. The effects of an array of drugs on the development of babies have been studied since the 1960's with the cigarette. Prenatal smoke exposure has been linked to increased risk for diseases, poor psychological and developmental outcomes, reduced birth weight and behavioral disorders later in life. A difficulty in predicting and establishing potential side effects of drugs on the fetus is due to the fact that the effect will depend on the time of pregnancy, dosage, and route of the drug.

 

In the following blog posts it will be reviewed and informed some of the ways it's been shown that substance abuse during pregnancy affects the epigenetics of fetal development that leads to some of the outcomes mentioned above.