ORANGEBURG - Women who use marijuana while they are pregnant run a greater risk of having babies with birth defects, and a researcher at the Nathan Kline Institute is working to understand how the drug affects the developing brain.

Vinod Yaragudri, a neurochemist and research scientist, has received a $376,086 grant from the National Institute of Drug Abuse for his work.

He will use the grant to study marijuana's effect on endocannabinoids - proteins in the brain.

 

  Nathan Kline Institute

 

Marijuana is one of the most widely abused drugs among women of reproductive age, but little is known about the long-term chemical and behavioral effects in children, he said.

Yaragudri will look specifically at how delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol - or THC, a major psychoactive component of marijuana - alters the function of the endocannabinoid system in developing fetuses.

"We want to know what the long-term effect is on the behavior of the offspring," he said.

His experiments will use mice that will be exposed to marijuana as they develop.

The mice will be given tests after they are born to gauge their behavior and ability to function.

Yaragudri said he hoped the study would lead to new ways to treat children born with forms of brain damage as a result of being exposed to marijuana while their mothers were pregnant.

"The findings of this study would be of great potential for developing drug therapies in the intervention of prenatal cannabis related birth defects," Yaragudri wrote in his grant application.

A lack of information about the dangers of prenatal marijuana exposure has led some young people to think the drug is not dangerous to use while pregnant, said Yaniyah Pearson, executive director of the Rockland Council on Alcohol and Other Drug Dependency.

Much more information is available about the dangers of alcohol use while pregnant and the problems of children born with fetal alcohol syndrome, she said.

"My concern is the way a lot of young people pick up information," she said. "If you say, 'don't do alcohol,' some young people can then think, 'OK, then I can do marijuana.'"

Surveys of Rockland students have shown that about 4 percent of middle and high school students use marijuana, inhalants and similar substances.

An estimated one-third of Rockland 10th-graders drink alcohol regularly, according to the Parents Resource Institute on Drug Education, or PRIDE, survey given to local students.

People need to learn that all drugs taken by pregnant women can leave permanent marks on their children, Pearson said.

Learning more about marijuana's effect on the developing fetus could improve understanding by young people about the risks they take when they use the drug.

"It's important research," Pearson said. "It will challenge us to get the message out there."

 

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