Neuro-developmental and behavioural effects in children due to marijuana use in prenatal period

Abstract

Topic Overview: In Malta, recreational marijuana has been legalised in 2021 and thus making this concept fairly new. The aim of this dissertation is to review and assess the effects in neuro-development and behaviour in children who were exposed to marijuana prenatally. Proposed research question: Does Marijuana use in prenatal period cause neurodevelopmental and behavioural effects in children between 1 and 11 years? PICO Elements: P- Children from 1 year up to 11 years I- Marijuana use in prenatal period C- Not using Marijuana in prenatal period O- Neuro-developmental and behavioural outcomes Inclusion and Exclusion criteria: The inclusion criteria included literature in the English language which was published in the last decade. This criterion also included journals and peer-reviewed articles. Additionally, all literature was based on children who were prenatally exposed to marijuana. As part of the exclusion criteria, literature like interviews, books, newspapers, dissertations and letters were included. Studies focusing solely on the mother and consumption of marijuana during gestation were excluded. Also, studies of the effects of prenatal marijuana in infants up to 1 year were excluded. Studies that mention the use of marijuana by the pregnant mother in conjunction with other illicit substances were included. This dissertation focused on the resulting effects of prenatal marijuana exposure on the neuro-development and behaviour of the child whilst any other effects were not considered. Results from the search: For this dissertation, a manual and electronic search was conducted. The following databases were used: Hybrid Discovery (HyDi) search engine of the University of Malta, PubMed Central, CINHAL Complete (EBSCO), MEDLINE (ProQuest), Scopus, Google Scholar search engine and ProQuest. This resulted with one ambidirectional cohort study, one retrospective cohort study, one systematic review, one cross-sectional study and one multi-informant prospective longitudinal study. Methods of appraisal utilised: The tools used for appraisal were the CASP and JBI. These were utilised depending on the study and its design. Principal results and conclusions: From all of the studies included in this dissertation, it resulted that marijuana in the prenatal period does indeed affect the child later on in life. Only few studies reported that marijuana exposure in prenatal period had no significant effect on child development. Despite this, the studies on which this dissertation was based, were not of good quality and thus definite conclusions could not be made. Implications and proposals: More research studies should be carried out with more participants and groups known as control groups. Randomised Controlled Trials are not ethical to be carried out in this case since this would include exposure through randomisation. However, due to this, there are currently no clinical studies employing prenatal marijuana and its effects on the offspring. To date, most of the studies focus on the exposed offspring at birth. Different stages in life apart from those mentioned should also be studied in order to investigate the overall effect that prenatal marijuana has. Communities and health care providers are encouraged to participate in learning programs. Knowledge about mental health conditions and prenatal marijuana could be done through educational programs covering these topics.