Cocaine exposure in the womb: The brain structure is intact but development is off track

Says a new study in Biological Psychiatry

2013-09-25

(Press-News.org) Philadelphia, PA, September 25, 2013 – Prenatal cocaine exposure affects both behavior and brain. Animal studies have shown that exposure to cocaine during in utero development causes numerous disruptions in normal brain development and negatively affects behavior from birth and into adulthood.

For ethical reasons, similar studies in humans have been more limited but some research has shown that children exposed prenatally to cocaine have impairments in attention, control, stress, emotion regulation, and memory. Research also suggests that such children may be more predisposed to initiate substance use.

Since adolescence is the typical period in life when substance use begins, researchers from the Yale University School of Medicine, led by Dr. Rajita Sinha, conducted a study to evaluate the gray matter differences and likelihood of substance use in adolescents who were cocaine-exposed prenatally versus those who were not.

To do this, they recruited 42 adolescents between the ages of 14 and 17, exposed in utero, who are part of a long-term cohort that have been followed since birth. They also studied 21 non-cocaine-exposed adolescents for comparison. All of the participants underwent structural neuroimaging scans and answered questions about their use of all kinds of illegal drugs, in addition to submitting urine samples for toxicology analyses.

What they found was concerning, but exactly what they had hypothesized. The adolescents with prenatal cocaine exposure had lower gray matter volume in key brain regions involved in emotion, reward, memory, and executive function, compared with non-exposed adolescents.

Gray matter volume was also associated with initiation of substance use. Astoundingly, each 1-mL decrease in gray matter volume increased the probability of initiating substance use by 69.6% to 83.6% depending upon the region of the brain.

"This study may have an important message for pregnant women who use cocaine. It appears that we need to take a long-term perspective on the risks associated with prenatal exposure to cocaine: people whose brains may appear structurally typical at birth may develop abnormally," said Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry. "While the significance of these structural changes is not clear, they merit further study."

Gray matter is the part of the nervous system that processes information, and deficits in gray matter are documented in many other disorders, including schizophrenia, anorexia, and childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. It is important to note that, as part of the study criteria, these participants had no significant medical or mental illness and differed only in whether their mothers had used cocaine while pregnant.

"Thus, for the first time in children we see how mothers' in-utero cocaine use may translate to brain changes in the offspring that impact cognition, mood and health of the affected offspring later in life," said Sinha. "One can speculate that in the future, with additional validation, such specific brain alterations may serve as biomarkers of risk that can be targeted to prevent drug use and abuse."

### The article is "Prenatal Cocaine Exposure and Gray Matter Volume in Adolescent Boys and Girls: Relationship to Substance Use Initiation" by Kenneth Rando, Tara M. Chaplin, Marc N. Potenza, Linda Mayes, and Rajita Sinha (doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2013.04.030). The article appears in Biological Psychiatry, Volume 74, Issue 7 (October 1, 2013), published by Elsevier.

Notes for editors Full text of the article is available to credentialed journalists upon request; contact Rhiannon Bugno at +1 214 648 0880 or Biol.Psych@utsouthwestern.edu. Journalists wishing to interview the authors may contact Rajita Sinha at +1 203 737 5805 or Rajita.Sinha@yale.edu.

The authors' affiliations, and disclosures of financial and conflicts of interests are available in the article.

John H. Krystal, M.D., is Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and a research psychiatrist at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System. His disclosures of financial and conflicts of interests are available here.

About Biological Psychiatry Biological Psychiatry is the official journal of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, whose purpose is to promote excellence in scientific research and education in fields that investigate the nature, causes, mechanisms and treatments of disorders of thought, emotion, or behavior. In accord with this mission, this peer-reviewed, rapid-publication, international journal publishes both basic and clinical contributions from all disciplines and research areas relevant to the pathophysiology and treatment of major psychiatric disorders.

The journal publishes novel results of original research which represent an important new lead or significant impact on the field, particularly those addressing genetic and environmental risk factors, neural circuitry and neurochemistry, and important new therapeutic approaches. Reviews and commentaries that focus on topics of current research and interest are also encouraged.

Biological Psychiatry is one of the most selective and highly cited journals in the field of psychiatric neuroscience. It is ranked 4th out of 135 Psychiatry titles and 13th out of 251 Neurosciences titles in the Journal Citations Reports® published by Thomson Reuters. The 2012 Impact Factor score for Biological Psychiatry is 9.247.

About Elsevier Elsevier is a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include ScienceDirect, Scopus, SciVal, Reaxys, ClinicalKey and Mosby's Suite, which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, helping research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.

A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group plc, a world leading provider of professional information solutions. The group employs more than 30,000 people, including more than 15,000 in North America. Reed Elsevier Group plc is owned equally by two parent companies, Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. Their shares are traded on the London, Amsterdam and New York Stock Exchanges using the following ticker symbols: London: REL; Amsterdam: REN; New York: RUK and ENL.

Media contact Rhiannon Bugno
Editorial Office
+1 214 648 0880
Biol.Psych@utsouthwestern.edu

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

A day in the life of the mysterious odd-clawed spider Progradungula otwayensis

2013-09-25

A recent paper published in the open access journal Zookeys provides a first-time glimpse in the natural history of the enigmatic spider species Progradungula otwayensis. Lurking in the hollows of old myrtle beech trees and thus hard to collect, this extraordinary spider is an endemic species confined strictly to the beautiful Great Otway National Park (Victoria, Australia). P. otwayensis belongs to the small spider family Gradungulidae which consists of seven genera with a total of 16 described species found exclusively in eastern Australia and New Zealand. The genus ...

New knowledge on molecular mechanisms behind breast cancer

2013-09-25

Researchers at University of Copenhagen have gained more insight into the molecular mechanisms of importance for, for example, cancer cell growth and metastasis. The research objective is improved and more targeted drugs. The findings have just been published in the scientific journal Molecular Cell. Researchers are constantly trying to learn more about the body's advanced communication processes. Receptors serve as a kind of switchboard in the cell, which connects specific signaling proteins to specific cellular functions. Using state-of-the-art technology, researchers ...

Melatonin helps control weight gain as it stimulates the appearance of 'beige fat'

2013-09-25

Melatonin is a natural hormone segregated by the body and melatonin levels generally increase in the dark at night. It is also found in fruit and vegetables like mustard, Goji berries, almonds, sunflower seeds, cardamom, fennel, coriander and cherries. Spanish scientists have discovered that melatonin consumption helps control weight gain because it stimulates the appearance of 'beige fat', a type of fat cell that burns calories in vivo instead of storing them. White adipose tissue stores calories leading to weight gain whereas 'beige fat' (also known as 'good or thinning ...

New multifunctional topological insulator material with combined superconductivity

2013-09-25

Most materials show one function, for example, a material can be a metal, a semiconductor, or an insulator. Metals such as copper are used as conducting wires with only low resistance and energy loss. Superconductors are metals which can conduct current even without any resistance, although only far below room temperature. Semiconductors, the foundation of current computer technology, show only low conduction of current, while insulators show no conductivity at all. Physicists have recently been excited about a new exotic type of materials, so-called topological insulators. ...

With carbon nanotubes, a path to flexible, low-cost sensors

2013-09-25

Researchers at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) are showing the way toward low-cost, industrial-scale manufacturing of a new family of electronic devices. A leading example is a gas sensor that could be integrated into food packaging to gauge freshness, or into compact wireless air-quality monitors. New types of solar cells and flexible transistors are also in the works, as well as pressure and temperature sensors that could be built into electronic skin for robotic or bionic applications. All can be made with carbon nanotubes, sprayed like ink onto flexible plastic ...

Long-term study reveals: The deep Greenland Sea is warming faster than the world ocean

2013-09-25

Since 1993, oceanographers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), have carried out regularly expeditions to the Greenland Sea on board the research ice breaker Polarstern to investigate the changes in this region. The programme has always included extensive temperature and salinity measurements. For the present study, the AWI scientists have combined these long term data set with historical observations dating back to the year 1950. The result of their analysis: In the last thirty years, the water temperature between 2000 ...

Sustainable livestock production is possible

2013-09-25

Consumers are increasingly demanding higher standards for how their meat is sourced, with animal welfare and the impact on the environment factoring in many purchases. Unfortunately, many widely-used livestock production methods are currently unsustainable. However, new research out today from the University of Cambridge has identified what may be the future of sustainable livestock production: silvopastoral systems which include shrubs and trees with edible leaves or fruits as well as herbage. Professor Donald Broom, from the University of Cambridge, who led the research ...

NASA satellites see Typhoon Pabuk's shrinking eye close

2013-09-25

Typhoon Pabuk's eye was clear on visible and infrared NASA satellite imagery on Sept. 24, and one day later high clouds covered the center and Pabuk's eye was "closed." Satellite data also showed that Pabuk's eye shrunk by about 5 nautical miles in the last day. When NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Typhoon Pabuk on Sept. 24 at 16:05 UTC/12:05 p.m. EDT, the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument viewed the storm in infrared light. The AIRS data clearly showed that Pabuk had a 30 nautical mile/34.5 mile/55.5 km wide-eye. AIRS data also showed that the eye was surrounded ...

Sheep's mucosa shows the way to more effective medicine for severe neurological diseases

2013-09-25

A big challenge in medical science is to get medicine into the brain when treating patients with neurological diseases. The brain will do everything to keep foreign substances out and therefore the brains of neurological patients fight a constant, daily battle to throw out the medicine prescribed to help the patients. The problem is the so-called blood-brain barrier, which prevents the active substances in medicine from travelling from the blood into the brain. "The barrier is created because there is extremely little space between the cells in the brain's capillar ...

Turning plastic bags into high-tech materials

2013-09-25

University of Adelaide researchers have developed a process for turning waste plastic bags into a high-tech nanomaterial. The innovative nanotechnology uses non-biodegradable plastic grocery bags to make 'carbon nanotube membranes' - highly sophisticated and expensive materials with a variety of potential advanced applications including filtration, sensing, energy storage and a range of biomedical innovations. "Non-biodegradable plastic bags are a serious menace to natural ecosystems and present a problem in terms of disposal," says Professor Dusan Losic, ARC Future ...

Cocaine exposure in the womb: The brain structure is intact but development is off track

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: