OBJECTIVE: To examine the relationship between maternal cigarette smoking during pregnancy and children's intellectual functioning during the first 4 years of life. DESIGN: Prospective follow-up of participants in a randomized trial of pregnancy and infancy nurse home visitation. SETTING: Semi-rural community in Upstate New York. PARTICIPANTS: 400 families in which the mothers registered before the 30th week of pregnancy and had no previous live births. Eighty-five percent of the mothers were either teenagers (< 19 years at registration), unmarried, or poor. Analysis limited to whites who comprised 89% of the sample. MAIN RESULTS: Children in the comparison group whose mothers smoked 10 or more cigarettes per day during pregnancy had Stanford-Binet scores at 3 and 4 years of age that were 4.35 (95% CI: 0.02, 8.68) points lower (after controlling for a wide range of variables) than their counterparts whose mothers did not smoke during pregnancy. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study add to the increasingly consistent evidence that maternal cigarette smoking during pregnancy poses a unique risk for neurodevelopmental impairment among children and provide an additional reason for pregnant women not to smoke cigarettes.
RCT Entities:
OBJECTIVE: To examine the relationship between maternal cigarette smoking during pregnancy and children's intellectual functioning during the first 4 years of life. DESIGN: Prospective follow-up of participants in a randomized trial of pregnancy and infancy nurse home visitation. SETTING: Semi-rural community in Upstate New York. PARTICIPANTS: 400 families in which the mothers registered before the 30th week of pregnancy and had no previous live births. Eighty-five percent of the mothers were either teenagers (< 19 years at registration), unmarried, or poor. Analysis limited to whites who comprised 89% of the sample. MAIN RESULTS:Children in the comparison group whose mothers smoked 10 or more cigarettes per day during pregnancy had Stanford-Binet scores at 3 and 4 years of age that were 4.35 (95% CI: 0.02, 8.68) points lower (after controlling for a wide range of variables) than their counterparts whose mothers did not smoke during pregnancy. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study add to the increasingly consistent evidence that maternal cigarette smoking during pregnancy poses a unique risk for neurodevelopmental impairment among children and provide an additional reason for pregnant women not to smoke cigarettes.
Authors: Robyn M Amos-Kroohs; Michael T Williams; Amanda A Braun; Devon L Graham; Cynthia L Webb; Todd S Birtles; Robert M Greene; Charles V Vorhees; M Michele Pisano Journal: Neurotoxicol Teratol Date: 2013-01-11 Impact factor: 3.763