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Jul 13 02 7:29 PM
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Nicotine exposure in the womb, even in the absence of other substances present in tobacco smoke, may lead to breathing difficulties in newborns, results of an animal study suggest.
The findings indicate that nicotine can have lasting harmful effects on developing fetal lungs, according to Dr. Hakan Sundell and colleagues of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee.
"The issue is of clinical significance, because nicotine replacement for pregnant women is often regarded as a safe alternative in smoking cessation programs," they write in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
The study involved a group of lambs that were exposed during their last trimester in the womb to nicotine through pumps that had been implanted in their mothers. The level of nicotine was equivalent to what a human fetus would be exposed to if a pregnant woman smoked mildly to moderately, the report indicates. A second group of lambs was not exposed to nicotine.
For a 5-week period after the lambs were born, various lung function tests showed that the animals exposed to nicotine in the womb had faster and more shallow breathing than those that had not been subjected to nicotine, according to the report.
"Prenatal nicotine exposure appears to have long-term effects on the postnatal breathing pattern, suggesting altered lung function," Sundell and colleagues write. "These changes are most marked close to birth but persist during the initial postnatal period."
Nicotine easily passes through the human placenta to a developing fetus, the researchers point out. And concentrations of nicotine in the fetus can be equal to or higher than in the mother, they add.
SOURCE: American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine 2002;166:92-97.
Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020712/hl_nm/children_nicotine_dc_1
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