Smoking in pregnancy increases the risk of ADHD in children

Babies born to women who smoked during pregnancy appear to have an increased risk of developing Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or  ADHD .*

This is what a recent study says which adds that even nicotine patches or gum could have the same effects on children, and therefore be harmful in pregnancy.

For many years, researchers have been evaluating the harm of smoking in pregnancy. Cigarettes have been shown to cause miscarriages, pregnancy complications, premature births, low birth weight and even long-term obesity in the child.

It is still not fully understood how smoking and nicotine use in pregnant women affects the brains of developing fetuses. Researchers speculate that nicotine may cause abnormalities in the brain. Other products of cigarette smoke, such as carbon monoxide, may also affect brain development in the fetus.

It is also true that there may be other factors linked to the association between smoking during pregnancy and ADHD.

It is hypothesized that ADHD may be a hereditary disorder and that people with ADHD are more likely to smoke than others. Therefore it is also possible that the presence of ADHD in the child is not directly linked to smoking during pregnancy but instead caused by a genetic issue or environmental and social influences.

In the study recently published in the influential journal Pediatrics , researchers examined the medical records of nearly 85,000 babies born in Denmark to mothers recruited in the study between 1996 and 2002.

ADHD symptoms have been found  in just over 2,000 children. The percentages were lower in children born to non-smoking parents (1.8%) and in families where the mother had stopped smoking and the father was a non-smoker (2%). The percentages of children with ADHD increased in families where both parents smoked (4.2%).

In households where dads did not smoke, ADHD rates were highest in those where pregnant moms were on nicotine replacement therapy (3.8%) or were smokers (3.4%). In families where the father smoked and the mother was on nicotine replacement therapy, rates of ADHD in children were 2.9%.

It must be considered that only a few women taking part in nicotine replacement therapy participated in the study and therefore the results in this sense are not reliable.

In any case, the results of this study, like all those that have been done on cigarette smoking in  pregnancy , are  excellent  reasons to give up smoking when you decide to have a baby.

The best thing to do would be to have already quit smoking when the baby is conceived. If you find yourself pregnant and are still smoking, stop as soon as possible.

Smoking before pregnancy does not appear to increase the risk of ADHD in the unborn child.

*ADHD is a  developmental self-control disorder . It includes difficulties with attention and concentration, impulse control, and activity level. These problems essentially derive from the child’s inability to regulate his or her behavior according to the passage of time, the objectives to be achieved and the demands of the environment. It should be noted that ADHD is not a normal growth phase that every child must overcome, nor is it the result of an ineffective educational discipline, and even less is it not a problem due to the child’s “badness”.