Infants born with opioid withdrawal syndrome have smaller heads than babies not exposed to opioids while in utero, according to a study published Dec. 10, in the journal Pediatrics.
Five things to know:
1. For the study, researchers compared compared head sizes of about 860 babies between 2014 to 2016, where half of the infants were born with neonatal abstinence syndrome, a disorder characterized by the exhibition of drug withdrawal symptoms at birth, and the other half were born to mothers who did not consume opioids during pregnancy, according to Science News.
2. Researchers found babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome had a head about 1 centimeter (in circumference) smaller than babies not exposed to the drug.
3. About 30 percent of babies born with the syndrome had "especially small heads," which was true for only 12 percent of babies born without the syndrome.
4. Babies with smaller headsmight have learning or behavioral problems later in life due to the opioids affecting brain growth.
5. About 372 of the babies with the syndrome were born to mothers who took methadone or buprenorphine during their pregnancy in order to treat their opioid addiction, both of which help combat opioid cravings and withdrawal symptoms without an overdose.
"You have to get off the street stuff," Craig Towers, MD, maternal fetal medicine specialist in Knoxville, Tenn., and co-author of the study told Science News. "It’s not pure, and it’s killing people."
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