Increasing risk of drug withdrawal in newborns as US opioid epidemic accelerates
Drug withdrawal is a well known complication of opioid exposure in the womb (in utero), but other psychotropic medications can also cause signs of withdrawal -- and are increasingly being prescribed to pregnant women who are also receiving an opioid. So a team of US researchers based at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, set out to assess the impact of in utero exposure to both psychotropic medications and opioids on number of cases and severity of neonatal drug withdrawal. They analysed data from over 200,000 pregnant women who were enrolled in the Medicaid program -- a US government program that pays for healthcare services -- and who received a prescription for an opioid. They then examined whether the risk of neonatal abstinence syndrome was increased among infants whose mothers were also prescribed psychotropic medication. After taking account of several factors that could have affected the results (known as confounders), the absolute risk for...