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Risks of cannabis use during pregnancy highlighted by Western study

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Prenatal pot exposure disturbs a system integral to brain structure and function, Western University researchers say in a new study linking the drug to significant lasting effects on learning and memory in rats.

Rats exposed to THC – the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana – in the womb behaved differently than non-exposed rats in their learning abilities, desire to socialize and memory, the new study attempting to uncover the effect of pot on unborn babies found.

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“Our research shows that prenatal THC exposure can lead to serious cognitive and memory deficits that are sex-dependent, enduring and potentially lifelong,” said Mohammed H. Sarikahya, head author and member of the addiction research group at Western’s Schulich school of medicine and dentistry.

While the research involves rats and not humans, the study is an important glimpse into how prenatal cannabis exposure in mammals affects the brains of their offspring, said Steven Laviolette, a professor at Schulich and study co-author.

“The take-home message is, even though cannabis is obviously a legal substance and a naturally occurring plant-derived substance, there’s still a lot we don’t know about how that might be impacting the fetal brain and what the long-term consequences might be,” he said.

“I think it’s worth thinking twice.”

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In the study, pregnant rats were exposed to a “mild to moderate” amount of THC that was injected daily, Laviolette said. High doses of the drug, which passes from the mother to the fetus through the placenta, can lead to toxic effects on the rat fetuses that researchers wanted to avoid, he said.

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Once the THC-exposed rats were born, the team tracked and tested the animals through various life stages and into adulthood.

The team ran the THC-exposed rats through several tests to gauge their social interaction, object recognition and tendency to explore new environments. They also ran emotion-measuring tests on the rats to check for signs of mood disturbances, including anxiety and depression.

The rats exposed to THC in utero behaved much differently than the control group of non-exposed rats in their learning capabilities, desire to socialize and memory of past social encounters, the study found.

Among the exposed rats, males and females both showed impairments in their thinking ability and behaviour, but males tended to show more emotional disturbances too, Laviolette said.

The team found decreased levels of fatty acid levels in several key areas of the exposed rats’ brains that lasted from birth into adulthood. Fatty acids are integral building blocks to brain structure and function, Laviolette said.

“They compose up to 80 per cent of the structural elements of the brain. They’re really essential components of normal brain function,” he said.

The Western researchers now are turning their attention to potential interventions to help mitigate or improve the brain impacts of the rats exposed to THC in utero.

“The next step in this study is to give a dietary intervention, focused on the fatty acid pathways, to see if we can reverse some of these negative effects,” Laviolette said, adding researchers have done something similar with rats exposed to THC during adolescence.

The Western study was published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.



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