Cannabis during pregnancy is associated with a higher risk of preterm birth: study – National



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A new study suggests that pregnant women who use cannabis are at greater risk of delivering their babies earlier, but the researchers say that much remains to be done to establish a direct link between cannabis and cannabis. premature births.

The work is from researchers at The Ottawa Hospital, the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, the BORN Ontario Provincial Birth Registry and the University of Ottawa. They examined 661,617 women who gave birth between 2012 and 2017 in Ontario – before recreational cannabis was legalized.

In the study, 9,427 women – 1.4% of the group – reported using cannabis during pregnancy. The rate of prematurity was 12%, compared to 6% for non-users.

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However, the researchers said that women who reported having used cannabis often had other risk factors: 59% smoked tobacco, 19% alcohol consumption and 11% alcohol consumption. opioids during pregnancy.

In an attempt to isolate the impact of cannabis, researchers compared users to non-users with similar risk factors. Again, they found a higher risk of preterm birth for cannabis users – 10.2% compared to 7.2% for non-users.

The study was published Tuesday in the journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA.

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Cannabis users were also more likely to have their baby sent to a neonatal intensive care unit: a 19.3% risk compared to 13.8% for non-users with similar risk factors.

The researchers noted that provincial birth data lacked many details, including how much cannabis women consumed, how often, at what stage of pregnancy, or how it was consumed.

They also concluded that cannabis was a causal factor in the risk of birth, but said that cannabis was "significantly badociated" with risks such as prematurity, small gestational age, and transfer to neonatal intensive care.

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