March, 2025
Prenatal cannabis use does not impede infants’ cognitive development, according to longitudinal data published in Maternal and Child Health Journal. Canadian investigators assessed the prevalence of prenatal cannabis use and its impact on early childhood development in a cohort of 1,489 mothers and infants.
Investigators reported no association between prenatal cannabis use and developmental indicators at age two, including fine motor skills and language development. However, researchers did not rule out the possibility of such changes developing later in life. “We found that cannabis use during pregnancy was not significantly associated with cognitive, fine motor, gross motor and language development of 2-year-old children” the study’s authors concluded.
École de psychologie de l’Université Laval; CHU de Québec-Université Laval Research Centre, Quebec City, QC; Université de Montréal; CHU Sainte-Justine Research Centre; Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, QC; University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB; Université de Sherbrooke; CHU de Sherbrooke Research Centre, Sherbrooke, QC; Canada
18 October, 2024
In the United States, two federal reports, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), may help allay at least some concerns around prenatal exposure to cannabis.
One study found that cannabis use during early pregnancy was not associated with child autism, while the other study found no association with increased risk for early childhood developmental delays.
The autism spectrum disorder (ASD) analysis included data from 178,948 pregnancies born to 146,296 unique individuals between 2011 and 2019, while the early development research used data from 119,976 pregnancies born to 106,240 individuals between early 2015 and late 2019. Children were screened at various points on autism and developmental measures.
Division of Research; Paediatric Subspecialties; Kaiser Permanente, California; Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA.
