Prenatal Tobacco or Cannabis Exposure May Affect Kids’ Brain Development

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Prenatal Cannabis or Tobacco Exposure May Affect Kids’ Brain Development


Prenatal exposure to cannabis is significantly associated with differences in cortical thickness, particularly in the frontal brain, in preadolescent children, a new structural MRI study shows.
“The current study combined with the existing literature about the long-term consequences of prenatal cannabis and tobacco exposure support the importance of preventing and reducing smoking cannabis and cigarettes during pregnancy,” the authors, led by Hanan El Marroun, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, write.
The study was published online June 15 in Biological Psychiatry.
Tobacco vs Cannabis Use
Researchers recruited study participants from the Generation R Study, an ongoing population-based prospective cohort study. Children aged 6 to 8 years were invited to participate in an MRI component.
Prenatal cannabis exposure was measured with maternal self-report as well as through urinalysis. Maternal tobacco use was prospectively assessed using postal questionnaires sent during each trimester.
The study included three groups: 113 nonexposed children; 96 children whose mothers smoked only tobacco during pregnancy; and 54 children whose mothers used cannabis during the pregnancy.
The authors note that prenatal cannabis use commonly co-occurs with smoking during pregnancy. In this study, only 14.8% of cannabis users did not smoke tobacco during pregnancy; 74.1% continued smoking during pregnancy.
Results showed that compared with nonexposed control persons, tobacco-exposed children, but not cannabis-exposed children, had smaller global brain volume.
Compared with nonexposed children, those exposed to cannabis had thicker frontal cortices, specifically, a thicker superior frontal area of the left hemisphere (clusterwise P < .001) and a thicker frontal pole of the right hemisphere (clusterwise P = .003).

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