Smoking in pregnancy may cause psychosis

Women who smoke during pregnancy put their children at greater risk of developing psychotic symptoms in their teenage years, according to new research.
 
British researchers studied 6,356 12-year-olds, all of whom completed an interview for psychotic-like symptoms, such as hallucinations or delusions. Just over 11%, or 734, of the children had suspected or definite symptoms of psychosis.
 
Smoking during pregnancy was found to be associated with an increased risk of psychotic symptoms in the children. The researchers observed a 'dose-response effect', meaning that the risk of psychotic symptoms was highest in the children whose mothers smoked the most heavily during pregnancy.
 
The study also examined whether alcohol use and cannabis use during pregnancy was associated with a higher risk of psychotic symptoms.
 
Drinking during pregnancy was associated with increased psychotic symptoms, but only in the children of mothers who had drunk more than 21 units of alcohol a week in early pregnancy.
 
Only a few mothers in the study said they had smoked cannabis during pregnancy, and this was not found to have any significant association with psychotic symptoms.
 
The reasons for the link between maternal tobacco use and psychotic symptoms are uncertain, but the researchers suggest that exposure to tobacco in the womb may have an indirect impact by affecting children's impulsivity, attention or cognition.
 
In the UK, it is estimated that between 15 and 20% of women continue to smoke during pregnancy.
 
"In our cohort, approximately 19 per cent of adolescents who were interviewed had mothers who smoked during pregnancy,” said Dr Stanley Zammit of Cardiff University’s School of Medicine, lead author of the study.
 
"If our results are non-biased and reflect a causal relationship, we can estimate that about 20% of adolescents in this cohort would not have developed psychotic symptoms if their mothers had not smoked. Therefore, maternal smoking may be an important risk factor in the development of psychotic experiences in the population,” he added.
 
The researchers have called for further studies to investigate how exposure to tobacco in the womb affects the development and function of children's brains.
 
The research was published in the British Journal of Psychiatry.
 
 

[Posted: Fri 02/10/2009]