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Maternal Nicotine Use Raises Risk Of ADHD In Children

posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday July 22 2014, @01:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the Up-in-Smoke dept.

lhsi writes:

Researchers have found a causal link between maternal nicotine use during pregnancy and a child having ADHD (Full text). The new study also hints-but doesn't prove-that nicotine-replacement products used during pregnancy, such as patches and gum, could pose the same risk to children.

In this large cohort of children followed up to 8 to 14 years of age, we found that both maternal and paternal smoking during pregnancy were associated with an elevated risk for ADHD, based on hospital diagnosis, medication, and hyperactivity/inattention scores. The association was consistently stronger for maternal smoking than for paternal smoking and was also found for mother's use of nicotine replacement during pregnancy. These results suggest a causal effect of smoking (and nicotine) during fetal life or other factors related to maternal nicotine dependance. The findings for paternal smoking could reflect an effect of passive smoking but may also be a result of social or genetic confounding

 
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  • (Score: 1) by goodie on Tuesday July 22 2014, @05:03PM

    by goodie (1877) on Tuesday July 22 2014, @05:03PM (#72353) Journal

    While I am certain that there are special cases where children should be followed closely and maybe (even though I really not convinced about it...) medicated in some way, I think that if we play the correlation game we will find a lot of things that relate to so-called ADHD.
    As far as I know it's a very North American thing anyway, although unfortunately it is starting to become popular across Europe as well (starting the in West of course).

    When we had our first child, the (old) doctor told us, at the first visit (around 2 weeks I think?) that our boy was very energetic. She said it was absolutely a good thing (anyway not being from North America we didn't think so either) but that we should watch out where we put him in school later because he could be pinned as "troublesome" or "hyperactive" even though there's nothing wrong with him and he just needs to be stimulated and challenged often. She advised for sports and physical activities as a good way to "channel" this energy. I always wonder that'll be like later on when we have to actually find a school for him.