The objective of this study was to determine whether long-term in utero exposure to methadone affects fetal performance on nonstress tests (NSTs). We retrospectively reviewed our experience with 28 women who were enrolled in an outpatient methadone maintenance program and received prenatal care at our institution. The median daily methadone ...

The risk of prematurity, stillbirth, small for gestational age, and central nervous system damage are clearly a consequence of maternal cocaine use during pregnancy. There is also the risk of concommitent use of alcohol which may cause long term developmental problems. Therefore cocaine should be avoided in pregnancy, but the ...

Ergotamine is a purified ergot alkaloid that has been suspected of being teratogenic. Animal data have shown effects mainly at doses toxic to the mother. Clinical reports in humans have been anecdotal, but in many the malformations are consistent with vascular injury. However, epidemiologic studies have not shown any clear ...

Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is characterized by a variety of physical and behavioral traits that result from maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy. Features of FAS include prenatal or postnatal growth deficiency, characteristic abnormal facial features, and central nervous system deficits (1). Based on data from the national Birth Defects Monitoring ...

Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is one of the leading causes of preventable birth defects and developmental disabilities in the United States (1). Since 1979, surveillance systems for estimating and tracking FAS have categorized cases using International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM), code 760.71 (2). This code comprises ...

A prospective study was carried out on 546 women interviewed during pregnancy about their drinking habits, in order to evaluate the association between alcohol consumption during pregnancy and spontaneous abortion. Pregnancy outcome (normal or abortion) was analysed as a dependent variable in a multivariate model where different levels of drinking ...

A 30-year-old female dentist was exposed to mercury vapour from a leaking amalgamator for approximately one year. No toxic effect was noted. During and after the exposure urine samples were regularly taken for mercury analysis. The highest value during this period was 60 micrograms Hg/l urine (expressed in micrograms/g creatinine: ...

Because the hair neonates are born with grows during the last 3 months of pregnancy, the presence of drugs (e.g. cocaine) or environmental toxins (e.g. nicotine) reflects fetal exposure to such compounds. In the case of cocaine, hair measurement are several fold more sensitive than maternal history or urine measurements. ...

Methylmercury (MeHg) is a human neurotoxin to which the developing fetal brain is especially sensitive. The lowest dose of MeHg that impairs neurodevelopment in the human fetus is not known. The Seychelles Child Development Study (SCDS) is testing the hypothesis that fetal MeHg exposure from a maternal diet high in ...

This study investigated psychological symptoms, self-reported postpartum by poor, primarily African American women who used cocaine during pregnancy. Ninety-nine cocaine-using mothers (COC+) were compared to 44 noncocaine-using mothers (COC-) on standardized measures of psychological distress and verbal comprehension. Mothers were interviewed to determined extent of drug involvement. COC+ mothers reported ...

Studies in Japan showed that fetal exposure to methylmercury during pregnancy can lead to severe neurodevelopmental changes in the infant while the mother suffers no or minimal effects. Fish contains methylmercury and there is concern that adverse neurodevelopmental effects may occur secondary to low-dose methylmercury exposure in utero from maternal ...

While cocaine abuse in pregnancy is associated with a number of negative outcomes for both mothers and infants, it is unclear to what extent cocaine is specifically responsible for these negative outcomes and how its effects are distinct from those associated with substance abuse in general. Use of other drugs ...

It is not known if fetal neurodevelopmental damage occurs in humans at the low-level methylmercury exposure achieved by eating fish. To address this question, a cohort of 804 children in the Republic of Seychelles was identified who had fetal methylmercury exposure from a maternal diet high in oceanic fish. Mercury ...

Maternal consumption during pregnancy of methylmercury (MeHg)-contaminated fish in Japan and of MeHg-contaminated bread in Iraq caused psychomotor retardation in the offspring. Studies in Iraq suggested adverse fetal effects when maternal hair mercury concentrations were as low as 20 ppm. This prospective study involved 131 infant-mother pairs in Mancora, Peru ...

CoMFA (comparative molecular field analysis) has been used to correlate the biodegradability of several classes of compounds. The technique uses an atomic probe to detect the steric and electrostatic fields around a molecule. Good cross-validated correlations were obtained for some series (alcohols, carboxylic acids and linear alkyl benzene sulphonates). Correlations ...

This paper reports a series of ultrasound observations on a human fetus from 21 weeks of gestational age at two weekly intervals to term. The mother, until 18 weeks of gestational age, was a user of cocaine but after this age used cocaine only once at 31 weeks gestation. The ...

Use of cocaine during pregnancy is known to have harmful effects on the mother and her fetus. Currently available models describing the pathogenesis of these effects focus on the involvement of cocaine target systems, primarily the noradrenaline transporter, in the mother and the fetus. The placenta which lies between the ...

OBJECTIVES: The goal of this investigation was to examine the effects of occupational noise during pregnancy prospectively. METHODS: The exposed group [continuous A-weighted sound level (LAeq(8 h)) > or = 78 dB] consisted of 111 pregnant women, and the reference group comprised 181 pregnant women with approximately similar work conditions ...

A pair of discordant twins exposed to heavy maternal alcohol consumption only during the second half of pregnancy is reported. Apparently, differences in susceptibility to the dysmorphogenic influence of ethanol caused 1 twin to be more severely affected than the other. One twin had prenatal growth retardation, neonatal withdrawal symptoms, ...

Teratogen exposures cause 1-2% of congenital abnormalities. Our anecdotal experience was that detailed fetal sonograms conducted for the indication of teratogen exposure failed to demonstrate significant morphological abnormalities. We reviewed our experience to see how often such examinations yielded positive results. Records from 11 September 1989 to 13 September 1993 ...

Our objective was to investigate the methodologic detection of cocaine abuse during pregnancy by determining the viability of meconium analysis for cocaine and its metabolites using chromatographic procedures as an alternative to urine testing using enzyme multiplied immunoassay technique. Our design was as follows: meconium and urine were taken from ...

2-Methoxypropanol-1 was investigated for prenatal toxicity in Himalayan rabbits after inhalation exposure to 0, 145, 225, 350, and 545 ppm for 6 hr per day from Gestation Day 6 through 18. Maternally toxic effects were found with decreased body weights from Day 12 of gestation through the end of the ...

This report describes the effects of two gram-negative bacterial endotoxin (lipopolysaccharide [LPS]) preparations on hamster pregnancy outcome variables. Single intravenous challenges with Escherichia coli and Porphyromonas gingivalis LPS on day 8 of pregnancy produced dose-dependent effects on fetal weight malformation and fetal resorption with E. coli LPS having potent embryolethal ...

The efficacy of alcohol screening questionnaires, the TWEAK, T-ACE, NET, MAST, and CAGE, in detecting periconceptional risk-drinking, > or = 1 oz absolute alcohol/day, was investigated in 4743 African-American women attending an inner-city prenatal clinic who had reported ever drinking. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, efficiency, follow-up rates, and receiver ...

This report summarizes findings from a prospective longitudinal study of the effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on a birth cohort of 500 offspring selected from 1,529 consecutive pregnant women in prenatal care by mid-pregnancy at two representative community hospitals. Effects of prenatal alcohol observable on size measures at birth were ...

We report a case of lack of fetal exposure to cocaine and benzoylecgonine as evidenced by meconium and hair analysis, but exposure to nicotine and its metabolite cotinine, after extensive maternal use of cocaine and nicotine. These data suggest that the mode of maternal use of cocaine and individual differences ...

The aim of this study was to estimate the association between moderate alcohol consumption in pregnancy and child development to the age of 3.5 years. Furthermore, the aim was to compare development indices at 18 and 42 months of age. This study is an extension of the Danish participation in ...

Dosemeci et al. (Am J Epidemiol 1990; 132:746-8) gave examples in which nondifferential misclassification of exposure reversed the direction of a trend. Gilbert (Am J Epidemiol 1991; 134:440-1) proposed that these examples occurred because the errors in exposure were systematic, and she pointed out that the relation between the measured ...

An investigation of the cytogenetic effects of chromium (Cr(VI) and Cr(III)) in Prussian carp (Carassius auratus gibelio) was made. For detecting cytogenetic damage, micronuclei induction in fish erythrocyte cells was employed. Fish were investigated 100 m above and 400 m below the discharge of leather waste products into the river ...

Two independent dominant lethal experiments were performed using different protocols with respect to strains of mice, inhalation exposure duration of 1,3-butadiene, and mating regimen. The short communication summarizes the results of the experiments and compares the induced dominant lethality according to the formula published by Ehling in 1978. Despite the ...

Mated Wistar rats were chronically exposed to a static magnetic field (MF) from day 1 to day 20 of pregnancy. Flux density of the MF was 30 mTesla (mT), i.e., within the range of exposures of operators of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) devices. For comparison with effects of this static ...

The profiles of occupational asbestos exposure were investigated in a series of 66 hospital patients in whom pleural plaques constituted the only asbestos-induced abnormality. The relationship between a radiological semiquantitative score of pleural plaques and indices of asbestos exposure was also examined. On the basis of a standardized occupational questionnaire, ...

A case of body stalk anomaly diagnosed prenatally by ultrasound during the 24th week of pregnancy in a cocaine abusing mother is presented. Accurate visualization of the fetal organs was difficult due to the severe oligohydramnios caused by premature rupture of membranes, probably related to the cocaine use. The sonographic ...

Maternal alcohol abuse during pregnancy can lead to abnormalities in fetal development, sometimes manifested as the fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS). Although intrauterine growth retardation is a hallmark of FAS, the pathophysiology is not fully understood. A contributing factor may be altered placental function. In this study, the effect of long-term ...

Prenatal cocaine exposure has been reported to cause neurovascular complications in the developing fetus. To determine the effect of cocaine on the fetal neurovasculature, we studied the in vitro response of fetal sheep cerebral arteries to cocaine and cocaine metabolites. The change in diameter of cannulated pressurized cerebral artery segments ...

The history of cocaine use is reviewed. Cocaine teratogenesis has only recently been studied, and initial human studies had serious methodological flaws. These flaws included ascertainment bias, publication bias (studies finding cocaine effects have been more likely to be presented or published), and overemphasis on the perinatal period. Comparison with ...

A teratogen is any environmental agent that permanently harms the developing fetus. Health-care providers who care for pregnant women are consulted regarding a variety of agents, including prescribed or over-the-counter medications, vaccinations, diseases or infections, chemical agents in the work place or at home, radiation, and alcohol, tobacco, and "street ...

The effects of cocaine on punished and unpunished key peck responding of pigeons was examined before and after a history of treadle pressing maintained by shock postponement. In one schedule component, the first peck after 3 min produced grain. The alternate component was similar, but every 30 responses was also ...

Although cocaine abuse has declined in popularity in the United States, certain groups continue to use the drug at high rates. The teratogenicity of cocaine has been widely investigated in the newborn. We report a case of crossed renal ectopia in a term neonate whose mother practiced alkaloid cocaine abuse ...

1. Maternal intake of 1 mEq CsCl in drinking water at conception until weaning the offspring mice resulted in certain maternal mediated neonatal and developmental toxicity. 2. Initial reduction in body and brain weights were determined in male offspring due to maternal exposure to Cs salt before they attained the ...

Cocaine has received much attention in the literature for its effects on the mother/infant pair when used during pregnancy. We describe a neonate who presents with wide-spread subcutaneous fat necrosis (SCFN), an as-yet-unreported finding that appears to be related to maternal use of cocaine during pregnancy.

OBJECTIVE: To compare radioimmunoassay of postpartum maternal hair samples with a structured maternal interview for the detection of cocaine use during pregnancy. METHODS: Radioimmunoassay of hair samples obtained postpartum was compared with self-report of cocaine use obtained by confidential, structured interviews of 405 postpartum women. RESULTS: Cocaine or benzoylecgonine was ...

The association of fetal growth retardation with prenatal exposure to alcohol, smoking, opiates, and cocaine is well documented, but relatively little is known about the effects of these exposures on postpartum growth. This study assessed physical growth from birth through 6.5 and 13 months in 412 black, inner-city infants recruited ...

Though much attention has been devoted to the behavioral and physiological consequences of cocaine abuse in offspring, little is known regarding the effects on the maternal behavior of the cocaine-exposed dam. We examined whether cocaine affects the initiation (late pregnancy) and/or maintenance (postpartum [PP]) phases of full maternal behavior (FMB; ...

This paper reports the results of a preliminary analysis of daily fatal crashes in New South Wales, Australia, between July 1975 and December 1986. The analysis unexpectedly uncovered a small but statistically significant decline in crashes coinciding with the introduction of a law lowering the legal blood alcohol concentration (BAC) ...

The array of results discussed in this paper is assembled by stage of gestation in the following table (Table 1). We must allow some uncertainty for some outcomes as to the precise stages of gestation in which they originate. For instance, with obesity, the effects of famine exposure may extend ...

Postmortem analysis of meconium from three human fetuses exposed to cocaine demonstrated the presence of cocaine in the meconium of a 17-week-old fetus and evidence that the concentration of cocaine in meconium is related to the amount and time of cocaine use by the mother during pregnancy. The latter observation ...

Maternal exposure to drugs and chemicals is increasingly being recognized as adversely affecting the developing fetus. To date, a very large number of fetuses have been exposed in utero to cocaine and cigarette smoke. Neonatal hair as a biological marker for fetal exposure in cocaine and nicotine has emerged as ...

Although it is recognized that drugs ingested by pregnant females produce marked cognitive and physiological deficits in their offspring, the possibility that paternal exposure to drugs prior to mating may have adverse effects on fertility and fetal outcome has not received much attention. The purpose of the present studies was ...

An acute injection of an intoxicating dose of alcohol to male rats 24 hours prior to breeding with drug-naive females produced no discernible effect on copulatory activity, as reflected in vaginal plugs, but resulted in markedly (> 50%) reduced pregnancy rates. Fetal outcome was also markedly affected in offspring sired ...