Reuters
Monday, July 28, 2008
Women who smoke during pregnancy may be putting their children at increased risk of suffering from anxiety, depression or withdrawal, Dutch researchers say.
Maternal smoking has been associated with externalizing behaviour such as aggression, hyperactivity and delinquency, which may begin in childhood and persist into adulthood.
Dr. Pol A.C. van Lier and colleagues at VU University of Amsterdam believe anxiety and depression, or internalizing behaviours, should be added to the list.
The researchers studied nearly 400 parents and their children when they were five, 10 and 18 years old. About seven per cent of the mothers reported smoking 10 or more cigarettes per day during pregnancy. The children of these mothers comprised the "exposed" group.
When compared with children whose mothers did not smoke during pregnancy, at each age assessment the exposed children had higher average scores for internalizing behaviours. As expected, the exposed group also had higher average scores for externalizing behaviours at each age.
The findings, which are published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, "suggest prenatally exposed children had significantly increased internalizing and externalizing problems from childhood into late adolescence," the researchers said.
"Clinicians should be aware when working with children whose mothers smoked."