Chapel Hill, NC: Infants exposed to cannabis in utero are no more likely to require emergency department care or suffer from developmental delays than non-exposed children, according to data published in the journal Academic Pediatrics.
Investigators affiliated with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill examined the relationship between in utero cannabis exposure and infants’ health care utilization and developmental outcomes.
“Compared to those unexposed, … children who were exposed to cannabis in utero have similar WCC [well child care] attendance and ED [emergency department] use over the first 2 years and similar developmental outcomes at 3 years,” researchers reported.
The authors acknowledged that their results were consistent with those of other studies, finding no differences in ED visits or developmental delays among cannabis-exposed and cannabis-unexposed children.
Although many studies have associated in utero cannabis exposure with low birth weight, longitudinal studies following in utero-exposed infants to adulthood have generally failed to identify “any long-term or long lasting meaningful differences” in their neurodevelopment.
Full text of the study, “Health care utilization and developmental delay among infants exposed to cannabis in utero,” appears in Academic Pediatrics. Additional information is available from the NORML Fact Sheet, ‘Maternal Cannabis Use and Childhood Outcomes.’