This article was originally published on The Cannigma, and appears here with permission.
Canadian mothers who used cannabis during pregnancy were slightly more likely to give birth to a child that received an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis, according to a new study. An expert cautioned against drawing conclusions of causality, however.
“This is an interesting first step, but much more work is needed to implicate maternal cannabis use specifically in autism risk,” Danielle Fallin, the director of the Wendy King Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said in an email sent to NBC news.
The researchers said that they found “an association between maternal cannabis use in pregnancy and the incidence of autism spectrum disorder in the offspring.”
For intellectual disability and learning disorders, the researcher said there was a higher incidence, though “less statistically robust.”
“There are cannabinoid receptors present in the developing fetus and exposure to cannabis may impact the wiring of the developing brain,” the study’s lead author, Daniel Corsi, told NBC.
Read the original Article on The Cannigma
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