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Marijuana accused of increasing the risk of autism

Canadian scientists from the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute have found out, that using marijuana while pregnant doubles the risk of autism in an unborn child.

In the United States, autism spectrum disorders are present in about 1.7% of preschool children. The statistics of the World Health Organization show that their number is increasing by 13% every year. In recent years, scientists have discovered dozens of genes associated with autism, but the already known mutations in them cannot fully explain a single case of autism in general and its individual symptoms in particular.

In recent years, scientists have found that many other factors affect the likelihood of developing autism, including the mother’s gut microflora, the composition of her milk and diet. Canadians analyzedhow often similar developmental disorders occurred in children who were born in Ontario between April 2007 and March 2012, using the example of half a million women.

It turned out that one of the biggest risk factors in the development of autism may be the fact whether the expectant mother uses marijuana during pregnancy. About 3,000 women used marijuana or synthetic analogues of its active substance (tetrahydrocannabinol) during gestation, while they did not use tobacco, alcohol or other drugs.

The researchers used statistics compiled by the provincial hospitals and social services to estimate how often the children of these women, as well as mothers who did not use marijuana, suffered from various forms of autism. A significant part of them, about 7000, received a similar diagnosis in the next seven years of observation.

As it turned out, marijuana use was associated with a significant increase in the risk of developing autism and the emergence of problems with intellectual development. In the first case, the odds almost doubled, and delays in intellectual development and attention deficit disorder affected the children of women who smoked marijuana during pregnancy by about 10-23% more than normal.

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