ORONO, Maine — Life gets off to a rough start for babies born to drug-dependent women, even when their mothers’ addiction is clinically managed with methadone during pregnancy. Born with their own chemical dependency, approximately 70 percent of these babies spend weeks in intensive care being treated for a cluster of unpleasant and dangerous symptoms of opiate withdrawal known collectively as Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome, or NAS.
Few studies have tracked NAS babies beyond the earliest weeks of their lives, but University of Maine doctoral student Beth Logan is pushing that body of research forward. Data from her Maine Infant Follow-Up Project show that well-managed maternal methadone therapy is not associated with developmental problems in the first year of life, but that frequent methadone increases may be linked with delays in babies’ ability to sit up, crawl and walk, which are important predictors of mental functioning and the ability to learn.
These findings imply it is essential for methadone to be properly managed during pregnancy to avoid frequent dose increases in response to maternal symptoms of withdrawal.
A mother’s use of alcohol while in methadone treatment also appears to be linked to developmental delays, according to the study.
Clinicians at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor and Maine Medical Center in Portland are at the national forefront of managing NAS babies, and their experience is guiding the way for doctors and hospitals in other states.
“It is an enormous social responsibility to be working on such an important problem,” Logan says of her research team, which includes principal investigators UMaine psychology professor Marie Hayes and Dr. Mark Brown, chief of pediatrics and director of nurseries at EMMC.
Logan and her research colleagues have enrolled 110 mother-baby groups in the longitudinal study, which began in 2006. A comparison group of about 30 mothers and their babies has similar demographics, but the mothers in that group are not opiate abusers.
Logan notes that opiate-dependent mothers-to-be typically embody a “perfect storm” of risk factors that can affect the development of their babies, both before and after birth. These include low income, low educational attainment, psychiatric diagnoses such as depression and anxiety and exposure to domestic violence. In addition, their lifestyles often include the abuse of alcohol, tobacco and drugs, poor nutrition, inadequate prenatal care, frequent changes in housing and a lack of family and community support.
While most babies in the study’s control group are standing, cruising and preparing to take their first steps at nine months, nearly 40 percent of babies in the methadone group are still having trouble crawling and sitting.
Logan says the next step is to extend the study to follow the same group of NAS babies through toddlerhood, assessing them at 18, 24 and 36 months of age.
Anyone that is on Methadone should also be required to take birth control at the same time, period.
keep in mind that many pregnant women come to methadone treatment under the recommendation of their doctors, so that by avoiding opiate withdrawals, their babies will survive.
Fortunately, that would be unconstitutional.
Unfortunetly, that wouldn’t stop alot of people
“Maine Infant Follow-Up Project show that well-managed maternal methadone therapy is not associated with developmental problems in the first year of life, but that frequent methadone increases may be linked with delays in babies’ ability to sit up, crawl and walk, which are important predictors of mental functioning and the ability to learn.”
My question is, what types of data was used to show that it was ONLY methadone alone that the babies were exposed to for 9 months?
Were ALL the monthly urine tests from the womens’ clinics reveiwed to see if any were using other drugs ( Rx or illegal) besides their prescribed methadone?
If all these women’s urine tests were consistently negative for ALL drugs except their methdone for 9 months, then this study does have some credibility.
Otherwise the study is flawed.
We need to compare all apples, not apples and oranges
FYI methadone, a synthetic narcotic, will not show up on a drug test
It certainly will, in fact the methadone clinics test the patients to make sure they are taking their methadone.
Just going by what an emergency room physician told me this morning
Many ER’s don’t test for methadone when a patient comes in and a urine test or blood test is done.
Many also don’t use the State Prescription Montioring Program either, before dropping a few hydrocodone in the patient’s hand before going back out the door.
My bad, we were talking about something else
yes, the conversation went from prenatal exposure to drugs to the current “Methadone Backlash.”
Thanks for putting us back on track.
Depends on what drug test is used.
The standard urine tests used by most methadone clinics show the positive results of the Rx methadone dosed with by patient daily.
An added plus to this is if the patient has takehome doses, they need to remain positive on the urine tests for their medication, or it implies potential diversion.
Thank you for the clarification.
Did they rule out cigarettes? That’s a huge factor. Also it’s correlational- it could be those needing increases have other problems in general
Bravo!!!
Nicotine is the “Silent Damager” of fetuses.
There’s a high link to ADD and ADHD with pregnant smokers. Nicotine cuases alot of painful withdrawals in newborns right after birth.
There can be low birth weight too.
THOSE things have been studied.
In a perfect world, fetuses would not be exposed to dangerous chemicals, but this is the real world.
I mean did the control for this in the study- I’m guessing majority on methadone smoke..so is it really the methadone
Exactly. The fact that 40% of the babies in the methadone group did not sit and crawl at the same time as the babies in the control group doesn’t necessarily mean that the methadone had anything to do with it. There could very well be other factors at play. As I learned in school – correlation does not indicate causation.