According to a new study, women who use marijuana during pregnancy could see a higher risk of autism in their babies.
The study analyzed data from more than 500,000 Canadian mothers and their children and found a 50 percent increase in the risk of autism spectrum disorder in kids whose mothers had used cannabis while pregnant. The study was published Monday in Nature Medicine.
“Cannabis is not a benign drug and any use during pregnancy should be discouraged,” said the study’s lead author, Daniel Corsi, an adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa and a scientist at the Children’s Hospital of Ontario Research Institute.
“We know that cannabinoids can cross placental tissue and enter the fetal bloodstream,” Corsi added. “There are cannabinoid receptors present in the developing fetus and exposure to cannabis may impact the wiring of the developing brain.”
Corsi and his colleagues had looked over data from all Ontario births that occurred from 2007 to 2012, which was before cannabis had become legalized in Canada. The final analysis had 503,065 children, 3,148 of whom had mothers who used cannabis while pregnant.
These children had been followed for an average of seven years, during which 7,125 were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. The rate of autism diagnoses among children with in utero cannabis exposure was 2.2 percent, as compared to 1.4 percent in those whose mothers did not use the drug during pregnancy.
