Fentanyl misuse during pregnancy can cause severe birth defects

The cases of newborns being born with critical congenital anomalies that impact their growth and development continue to increase because researchers have enough evidence linking illicit fentanyl to the issues. 
 
Hospitals have now reported at least 30 cases of what has been termed ‘fetal fentanyl syndrome,’ NBC News has ascertained. The children born were by mothers who reported using street drugs especially fentanyl during their pregnancies. 
 
“I have identified 20 patients,” Dr Miguel Del Campo, Medical Geneticist for Rady Children’s Hospital San Diego and Focus on children with FASD born from Drugs and Alcohol affected parents. “I have a terrible feeling that it is not unusual and that children remain undiagnosed. ” 
 
The syndrome was discovered in the 10 babies last fiilled by the geneticists of Nemours Children’s Health in Wilmington, Delaware. The infants had specific physical birth defects: Cleft palate, abnormally small head and/or limbs, drooping eyelids, toes that may be connected, and limbs that did not develop fully. Some had trouble feeding. 
 
Articles that Del Campo read in professional journals interested her in the babies. He had earlier on identify some children with those abnormalities as suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome, even if the mothers of the children did not drink during pregnancy. 
 
”Looking at the paper and reflecting on some things,” he said, “I have realized about the risk of coming into contact with fentanyl. ” 
 
When the Nemours team first spotted the 10 cases of fetal fentanyl syndrome last fall, Gripp was the geneticist on call there. “This is another huge piece of the puzzle” outlining the defects, she said. 
 
These birth defects observed in the babies are similar to a syndrome that is scientifically known as Smith-Lemli-Opitz. It is a state where the fetal ability to synthesise cholesterol is compromised, a substance that is vital in the brain’s formation. Yet, to repeat, none of the babies had Smith-Lemli-Optiz. 
 
The mothers’ self-admitted drug use was a clear indication as to what was causing the defects, yet there was no factual evidence that fentanyl ceased cholesterol synthesis in embryos. 
 
Indeed, when Gripp and a team of researchers at the University of Nebraska Medical Center treated human and mouse cells with fentanyl, they found the drug derailed the cells’ efforts to manufacture cholesterol. 
 
“This is not something that people had known before, that fentanyl affects cholesterol metabolism this way,” Gripp said. “That is very critical especially because cholesterol has to be built from the ground up as the formation of the embryo goes on. 
 
Their paper on the relationship was published in the Molecular Psychiatry in June. 
 
Who is at risk 
 
Fentanyl addiction during pregnancy also poses other risks such as preterm birth and still birth. Babies that have been exposed to a lot of fentanyl in the womb can develop seizures, vomiting, and diarrhea and become irritable and weak apart from having poor feeding habits and always feeling tired. 
 
However, with the increased cases of fentanyl abuse including during pregnancy there has been no equivalent substantial increase in birth anomalies. Also, many babies that are exposed to fentanyl during pregnancy do not come into the world with the defects that are associated with fetal fentanyl syndrome. 
 
The novelty of this investigation contributes to its providing such an explanation. 
 
It was determined that two copies of the gene for Smith-Lemli-Optiz result to the syndrome; however, the cells that had only one copy of the gene for the variance were more vulnerable to the effect of fentanyl. 
 
In other words, it is in terms of the one or other copy of the gene that some babies may be born more feeble. 
 
Thank you for the warning, but it should be added that not all people are equally vulnerable: Dr. Karoly Mirnics, the director of the Munroe-Meyer Institute for Mental Health Research at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and one of the authors of the work, said that in a press release on the study. “The prospective side effect profile of any drug or chemical might simply stem from whatever genetic make-up, life-style and environmental exposures you and I respectively might be ‘endowed’ with. ” 
 
Gripp still believes that more cases of fetal fentanyl are going to be reported just as awareness of fetal harm increases and further research is carried out. 
 
“The group is growing,” said she. “It lies in the expectation that there will be many more patients. ” 
 
Del Campo, also an associate professor of clinical medicine at University of California San Diego, pointed out that the next step is to correctly identify all the cases of fetal fentanyl syndrome so that the doctors can track those children later on. 
 
“It is imperative to know the status of these kids The children I agreed to look after include 2-year-olds who give me serious worry,” he said. “Okay, the characters are just stagnant or, in other words, they do not progress at all in the course of the play. ”