Smoking in pregnant women leads to hyperactivity and ADHD in the children

[steven johnson]

There are four thousand chemicals in cigarette smoke and many of these will pass into the brain of the unborn fetus.

Smoking during pregnancy significantly increases the risk of having a child with behavioral problems, hyperactivity and attention deficit disorder. The abnormalities can occur as early as three years of age.

Smoking during pregnancy significantly increases the risk of having a child with behavioural problems, according to UK and US researchers.

Writing in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, they say the problems can be evident in children as young as three years old.

Mothers who were light smokers were 44% more likely to have boys who had problems with their conduct. Heavy smokers were 80% more likely to have boys with these problems.

Both heavy and light smokers were also significantly more likely to have boys who were hyperactive or had attention deficit disorders.



Smoking mums have 'problem kids'

[virgogal]

1. I smoked through 6 pregnancies,as many did of my generation.

No health problems or ADHD or anything.

All middle aged now with kids of their own.

[steven johnson]

6. Da Nile isn't just a river in Egypt

Addiction causes many cognitive distortions of which denial is simply one.


College students' responses to antismoking messages: denial, defiance, and other boomerang effects

Cognitive Basis of Denial in Addiction

[virgogal]

7. No denial here,just the plain old truth. If these stats were true

many of the Boomers would have been off-the-wall and that just wasn't true.

[timeforpeace]

13. How many years have you been smoking? How's your health?

[mamaleah]

2. Well this is a weird one.

See, we really don't know how many kids 50 years ago would have been labeled as ADD or ADHD. And fewer people smoke now than then. So how are they coming up with their conclusions? Are we only running with a few years worth of data?

[opihimoimoi]

3. That partially explains the GOPiacs and their compulsive Bulliness and greed

They be stuck in Childhood Level.

[Hello_Kitty]

4. So why do yuppies' kids have such a high prevalence of ADHD?

Smoking, especially while preggers, is a MAJOR taboo among upper middle class and affluent white people. Yet an amazingly high number of their children have been diagnosed with ADHD.

[mamaleah]

5. Is it real ADD or ADHD though?

Lots of kids are getting saddled with that diagnosis. Yuppy parents tend to also be non-existent, nanny hiring parents too. Maybe it's lack of parental contact.

[ElboRuum]

8. I've got no idea... and according to this, neither should you.

Out of curiosity, I went on Wikipedia (I know, I know, not the best source for this sort of thing, but it is typically accurate enough for the purposes of layperson's conversation) and checked out the symptom list for this disorder.

If you check out the link, look at that list carefully, and see how many of them you would associate with "likely behavior for any child". From what I read, the health care apparatus views this as a real disorder, however, the diagnosis has been controversial since the 1970's and it's easy to see why. Nevertheless, since they are convinced of the reality of this disorder, their primary concern is how to diagnose it accurately, made obviously harder by the similarity of childhood behaviors. I would guess that psychiatrists and psychologists would prefer to overdiagnose so as not to miss any legitimate cases. Of course, the cynical bastard in me knows that the pharmaceutical companies just love this so that the prescriptions keep flying.

[steven johnson]

9. And possibly it's smoking -- and possibly it's alcohol

So you are saying this study which the current study replicates is using the wrong definitions? Or that there is cult of yuppy, nanny-hiring parents who have taken over Harvard University?

Don't drink the Koolaid after you light up.

J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2002 Apr;41(4):378-85.

Case-control study of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and maternal smoking, alcohol use, and drug use during pregnancy.
Mick E, Biederman J, Faraone SV, Sayer J, Kleinman S.

Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, USA.

OBJECTIVE: To address the putative association between attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and prenatal exposure to maternal cigarette smoking, drugs of abuse, and alcohol attending to potential confounding by familial ADHD, maternal depression, conduct disorder, and indicators of social adversity in the environment. METHOD: A retrospective, hospital-based, case-control study was conducted with 280 ADHD cases and 242 non-ADHD controls of both genders. The case and control children and their relatives were systematically assessed with structured diagnostic interviews. Logistic regression analysis was used to determine the adjusted effect of prenatal exposure to substance use and ADHD. RESULTS: ADHD cases were 2.1 times (95% confidence interval = 1.1-4.1;p = .02) more likely to have been exposed to cigarettes and 2.5 times (95% confidence interval = 1.1-5.5; p = .03) more likely to have been exposed to alcohol in utero than were the non-ADHD control subjects. Adjustment by familial psychopathology, Rutter's indicators of social adversity, and comorbid conduct disorder did not account for the effect of prenatal exposure to alcohol or the products of cigarettes. CONCLUSIONS: ADHD may be an additional deleterious outcome associated with prenatal exposure to alcohol independently of the association between prenatal exposure to nicotine and smoke products and other familial risk factors for the disorder.

PMID: 11931593

Case-control study of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and maternal smoking, alcohol use, and drug use during pregnancy

[mamaleah]

10. I don't smoke.

Never have. I also do not see tobacco as the Great Satan.

I am just trying to understand their methods.

[steven johnson]

12. They used the NIMH Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children

Older individuals were assessed using the diagnostic criteria in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatry.

[HuckleB]

16. Link to prove your assertion?

[d_r]

11. smoking not good during pregnancy

There are lots of alternative explanations here, but the link between smoking and low-birth weight and premature babies is so documented it shouldn't really matter.

They did control for SES, maternal age, etc.

But this study is all self-report. Maybe the mom's who smoked rated their children differently because they were more stressed out.

Or maybe the reason mom's smoked was that they were more stressed out in the first place, then passed those stressed out genes to their kids.

Parenting behavior was controlled for, but again self-report. So maybe the smoking moms were more likely to fly off the handle or be quick to temper with the children, resulting in the outcomes.

Also, by now most women know not to smoke during pregnancy, so smoking during pregnancy is a sign of deviant behavior, not normative behavior. If mom's were willing to smoke during pregnancy they may be willing to do other things too. SES and maternal education were controlled, which should account for some of that, but it is still known to be risky behavior.

Anyway, there are clearly other explanations. But it shouldn't matter, we know clearly that it isn't good to smoke during pregnancy.

And yes, plenty of kids did just fine, just as plenty of kids did fine without wearing bike helmets and with lead paint on the walls. But there were also kids who suffered health problems because they were disproportionately born with low birth weight, just as there were kids who got brain damage and lead poisoning.

[Orrex]

14. I have never smoked in a pregnant woman

[Name removed]

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