Marijuana use while pregnant boosts risk of children's sleep problems
Negative effects seen as much as a decade later
July 2, 2020
Science Daily/University of Colorado at Boulder
As many as 7% of moms-to-be use marijuana while pregnant, and that number is rising fast as more use it to quell morning sickness. But new research suggests such use could have a lasting impact on the fetal brain, influencing children's sleep for as much as a decade.
Use marijuana while pregnant, and your child is more likely to suffer sleep problems as much as a decade later, according to a new University of Colorado Boulder study of nearly 12,000 youth.
Published in Sleep Health: The Journal of The National Sleep Foundation, the paper is the latest to link prenatal cannabis use to developmental problems in children and the first to suggest it may impact sleep cycles long-term.
It comes at a time when -- while the number of pregnant women drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes has declined in the United States -- It has risen to 7% of all pregnant women as legalization spreads and more dispensaries recommend it for morning sickness.
"As a society, it took us a while to understand that smoking and drinking alcohol are not advisable during pregnancy, but it is now seen as common sense," said senior author John Hewitt, director of the Institute for Behavioral Genetics at CU Boulder. "Studies like this suggest that it is prudent to extend that common sense advice to cannabis, even if use is now legal."
A landmark study
For the study, Hewitt and lead author Evan Winiger analyzed baseline data from the landmark Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, which is following 11,875 youth from age 9 or 10 into early adulthood.
As part of an exhaustive questionnaire upon intake, participants' mothers were asked if they had ever used marijuana while pregnant and how frequently. (The study did not assess whether they used edibles or smoked pot). The mothers were also asked to fill out a survey regarding their child's sleep patterns, assessing 26 different items ranging from how easily they fell asleep and how long they slept to whether they snored or woke up frequently in the night and how sleepy they were during the day.
About 700 moms reported using marijuana while pregnant. Of those, 184 used it daily and 262 used twice or more daily.
After controlling for a host of other factors, including the mother's education, parent marital status and family income and race, a clear pattern emerged.
"Mothers who said they had used cannabis while pregnant were significantly more likely to report their children having clinical sleep problems," said Winiger, a graduate student in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience.
Those who used marijuana frequently were more likely to report somnolence symptoms (symptoms of excess sleepiness) in their children, such as trouble waking in the morning and being excessively tired during the day.
The authors note that, while their sample size is large, the study has some limitations.
"We are asking mothers to remember if they smoked marijuana 10 years ago and to admit to a behavior that is frowned upon," said Winiger, suggesting actual rates of prenatal use may have been higher.
While the study doesn't prove that using cannabis while pregnant causes sleep problems, it builds on a small but growing body of evidence pointing to a link.
For instance, one small study found that children who had been exposed to marijuana in-utero woke up more in the night and had lower sleep quality at age 3. Another found that prenatal cannabis use impacted sleep in infancy.
And, in other previous work, Hewitt, Winiger and colleagues found that teenagers who frequently smoked marijuana were more likely to develop insomnia in adulthood.
The fetal brain on THC
Researchers aren't sure exactly how cannabis exposure during vulnerable developmental times might shape future sleep. But studies in animals suggest that THC and other so-called cannabinoids, the active ingredients in pot, attach to CB1 receptors in the developing brain, influencing regions that regulate sleep. The ABCD study, which is taking frequent brain scans of participants as they age, should provide more answers, they said.
Meantime, mothers-to-be should be wary of dispensaries billing weed as an antidote for morning sickness. According to CU research, about 70% of Colorado dispensaries recommend it for that use. But mounting evidence points to potential harms, including low birth weight and later cognitive problems. With marijuana on the market today including far higher THC levels than it did a decade ago, it's impacts on the fetal brain are likely more profound than they once were.
"This study is one more example of why pregnant women are advised to avoid substance use, including cannabis," said Hewitt. "For their children, it could have long-term consequences."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200702153700.htm
Brain's receptors sensitive to pot may 'open door' in treating drug dependence, brain disorders
June 7, 2006
Science Daily/Society of Nuclear Medicine
A team of Johns Hopkins researchers developed a new radiotracer—a radioactive substance that can be traced in the body—to visualize and quantify the brain’s cannabinoid receptors by positron emission tomography (PET), opening a door to the development of new medications to treat drug dependence, obesity, depression, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease and Tourette syndrome.
Discovery of the [11C]JHU75528 radioligand, a radioactive biochemical substance that is used to study the receptor systems of the brain, “opens an avenue for noninvasive study of central cannabinoid (CB1) receptors in the human and animal brain,” explained Andrew Horti, assistant professor of radiology at Johns Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore, Md. He explained that there is evidence that CB1 receptors play an essential role in many disorders including schizophrenia, depression and motor function disorders. “Quantitative imaging of the central CB1 using PET could provide a great opportunity for the development of cannabinergic medications and for studying the role of CB1 in these disorders,” added the co-author of “PET Imaging of Cerebral Cannabinoid CB1 Receptors with [11C]JHU75528.”
Cannabinoid receptors are proteins on the surface of brain cells; they are most dense in brain regions involved with thinking and memory, attention and control of movement. The effects of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the primary psychoactive compound in marijuana, are due to its binding to specific cannabinoid receptors located on the surface of brain cells. “Blocking CB1 receptors presents the possibility of developing new, emerging medications for treatment of obesity and drug dependence including alcoholism, tobacco and marijuana smoking,” said Horti.
The usefulness of in vivo (in the body) radioligands for studying cerebral receptors by PET depends on the image quality, and a good PET radiotracer must display a high level of specific receptor binding and low non-specific binding (binding with other proteins, cell membranes, etc.), said Horti. “If the non-specific binding is too high and specific binding is too low, the PET images become too ‘noisy’ for quantitative measurements,” he noted. “We developed a PET radiotracer with a unique combination of good CB1 binding affinity and relatively low non-specific binding in mice and baboon brains,” he added. “Previously developed PET radioligands for imaging of CB1 receptors were not suitable for quantitative imaging due to the high level of image ‘noise,’” he added.
“Even though PET methodology was developed 30 years ago, its application for studying cerebral receptors is limited due to the lack of suitable radioligands,” said Horti. “Development of [11C]JHU75528 will allow noninvasive research of CB1 receptor,” he added, indicating that Johns Hopkins researchers need to complete various safety studies and obtain Food and Drug Administration approval before [11C]JHU75528 can be used for PET imaging in people.
“This discovery would not have been possible without involvement of many highly qualified researchers, including the teams of Robert Dannals and Dean Wong and support of Richard Wahl, director of the nuclear medicine department,” said Horti.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/06/060607082641.htm