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Association between marijuana use and adverse obstetrical and neonatal outcomes

Journal of Perinatology volume 35, pages 991–995 (2015)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Objective:

To evaluate associations between marijuana exposure and adverse outcomes excluding women with polysubstance abuse and stratifying for concurrent maternal tobacco use.

Study Design:

We performed a retrospective cohort study evaluating various obstetrical and neonatal outcomes including: preterm delivery, pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, cesarean delivery, fetal growth restriction, a composite which included stillbirth or neonatal intensive care unit admission, and perinatal mortality. We stratified study groups according to the maternal tobacco use and performed a logistic regression analysis.

Results:

We included 6468 women, 6107 nonusers and 361 marijuana users. After adjustment for maternal age, race, parity, body mass index and no prenatal care, we found higher rates of small for gestational age (aOR 1.30 (95% CI 1.03 to 1.62)) and neonatal intensive care unit admission (aOR 1.54 (1.14 to 2.07)) in women who were not tobacco users. Other obstetrical outcomes including preterm delivery and fetal anomalies were not increased with maternal marijuana use.

Conclusion:

Maternal marijuana use does not increase the risk of adverse obstetrical outcomes or fetal anomalies, but does increase the risk for small for gestational age and neonatal intensive care unit admission.

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Acknowledgements

Study data were collected and managed with REDCap software, which is hosted at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center under the Center for Clinical and Translational Science and Training grant support (UL1-RR026314-01 NCRR/NIH). REDCap is a secure, web-based application that was designed to support data capture for research studies to provide (1) an intuitive interface for validated data entry, (2) audit trails for tracing data manipulation and export procedures, (3) automated export procedures for seamless data downloads to common statistical packages and (4) procedures for importing data from external sources.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology,

    C R Warshak, J Regan, B Moore & J Van Hook

  2. , University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    C R Warshak, J Regan, B Moore & J Van Hook

  3. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, The Christ Hospital, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    K Magner

  4. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology,

    S Kritzer

  5. , Northwestern University of Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA

    S Kritzer

Authors
  1. C R Warshak
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  2. J Regan
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  3. B Moore
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  4. K Magner
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  6. J Van Hook
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to C R Warshak.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Warshak, C., Regan, J., Moore, B. et al. Association between marijuana use and adverse obstetrical and neonatal outcomes. J Perinatol 35, 991–995 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/jp.2015.120

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