Another reason not to smoke while pregnant
Reported November 20, 2008
Children of women who lit up during pregnancy have more damage to their arteries and might face related cardiovascular troubles later in life, according to new research that adds another ailment to the list of problems common to smokers’ children.
People born to mothers who smoked during pregnancy had significantly thicker carotid arteries than those whose mothers didn’t smoke, according to the study of 732 people born in the 1970s. Almost a third of their mothers smoked during pregnancy. The average age of study participants was 28.
Artery damage was even more significant in the children of parents who both smoked.
The research, conducted in the Netherlands, appears in this week’s edition of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, a journal of the American Heart Association.
It does not conclusively show when the blood-vessel damage begins, but lead author Dr. C.S.P.M. Uiterwaal said the process might start before birth.
About 18 percent of pregnant Ohio women smoke, according to the state Health Department. The number has remained relatively steady for the past decade.
Smoking while pregnant can contribute to low birth weight, breathing difficulties, altered brain development and behavioral problems. One study even linked criminal behavior in teenagers with fetal smoke exposure, said Dr. Thomas Houston, director of the nicotine dependence program at McConnell Heart Health Center at Riverside Methodist Hospital.
Doctors and scientists have long known about the potential for blood-vessel damage in very young smokers, but evidence of artery-lining damage from prenatal exposure is new, he said.
“Exposure to smoke at any point in life seems to be harmful to the arterial system,” said Houston, who thinks follow-up study looking at the lifelong health effects of early damage would be interesting.
The researchers also found that children of mothers who smoked were smaller at birth, heavier in adolescence and more likely to smoke themselves.
This new study adds more weight to the warnings doctors give pregnant smokers and their partners, said Dr. Phillip J. Shubert, who specializes in maternal-fetal medicine and is director of perinatology at Mount Carmel St. Ann’s.
“If you have hard data to share with the patient, that this particular behavior might be detrimental to your baby that obviously helps the doctor move the patient in that direction,” Shubert said.
If the research continues to pan out, and reveals direct impact on the fetus, it will be even more significant, he said.
Uiterwaal’s team plans to study 5-year-old children to see if blood-vessel damage is apparent at that age.
