Cargando…
Gender Differences in the Outcome of Offspring Prenatally Exposed to Drugs of Abuse
Despite great efforts to warn pregnant women that drugs of abuse impact development of the embryo and the fetus, the use of legal and illegal drugs by childbearing women is still a major public health concern. In parallel with well-established teratogenic effects elicited by some drugs of abuse, epi...
Autores principales: | , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2020
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7291924/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32581736 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2020.00072 |
_version_ | 1783545997219069952 |
---|---|
author | Traccis, Francesco Frau, Roberto Melis, Miriam |
author_facet | Traccis, Francesco Frau, Roberto Melis, Miriam |
author_sort | Traccis, Francesco |
collection | PubMed |
description | Despite great efforts to warn pregnant women that drugs of abuse impact development of the embryo and the fetus, the use of legal and illegal drugs by childbearing women is still a major public health concern. In parallel with well-established teratogenic effects elicited by some drugs of abuse, epidemiological studies show that certain psychoactive substances do not induce birth defects but lead to subtle neurobehavioral alterations in the offspring that manifest as early as during infancy. Although gender differences in offspring susceptibility have not been fully investigated, a number of longitudinal studies indicate that male and female progeny exposed in utero to drugs of abuse show different vulnerabilities to deleterious effects of these substances in cognitive, executive, and behavioral domains. Here, we briefly review the existing literature focusing on gender differences in the neurobehavioral consequences of maternal exposure to drugs of abuse. Overall, the data strongly indicate that male exposed progeny are more susceptible than female to dysfunctions in cognitive processing and emotional regulation. However, insights into the mechanisms determining this natural phenomenon are not currently available. Our analysis prompts future investigations to implement clinical studies including the influence of gender/sex as a biological variable in the outcome of offspring prenatally exposed to drugs of abuse. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7291924 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-72919242020-06-23 Gender Differences in the Outcome of Offspring Prenatally Exposed to Drugs of Abuse Traccis, Francesco Frau, Roberto Melis, Miriam Front Behav Neurosci Neuroscience Despite great efforts to warn pregnant women that drugs of abuse impact development of the embryo and the fetus, the use of legal and illegal drugs by childbearing women is still a major public health concern. In parallel with well-established teratogenic effects elicited by some drugs of abuse, epidemiological studies show that certain psychoactive substances do not induce birth defects but lead to subtle neurobehavioral alterations in the offspring that manifest as early as during infancy. Although gender differences in offspring susceptibility have not been fully investigated, a number of longitudinal studies indicate that male and female progeny exposed in utero to drugs of abuse show different vulnerabilities to deleterious effects of these substances in cognitive, executive, and behavioral domains. Here, we briefly review the existing literature focusing on gender differences in the neurobehavioral consequences of maternal exposure to drugs of abuse. Overall, the data strongly indicate that male exposed progeny are more susceptible than female to dysfunctions in cognitive processing and emotional regulation. However, insights into the mechanisms determining this natural phenomenon are not currently available. Our analysis prompts future investigations to implement clinical studies including the influence of gender/sex as a biological variable in the outcome of offspring prenatally exposed to drugs of abuse. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-06-05 /pmc/articles/PMC7291924/ /pubmed/32581736 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2020.00072 Text en Copyright © 2020 Traccis, Frau and Melis. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Neuroscience Traccis, Francesco Frau, Roberto Melis, Miriam Gender Differences in the Outcome of Offspring Prenatally Exposed to Drugs of Abuse |
title | Gender Differences in the Outcome of Offspring Prenatally Exposed to Drugs of Abuse |
title_full | Gender Differences in the Outcome of Offspring Prenatally Exposed to Drugs of Abuse |
title_fullStr | Gender Differences in the Outcome of Offspring Prenatally Exposed to Drugs of Abuse |
title_full_unstemmed | Gender Differences in the Outcome of Offspring Prenatally Exposed to Drugs of Abuse |
title_short | Gender Differences in the Outcome of Offspring Prenatally Exposed to Drugs of Abuse |
title_sort | gender differences in the outcome of offspring prenatally exposed to drugs of abuse |
topic | Neuroscience |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7291924/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32581736 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2020.00072 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT traccisfrancesco genderdifferencesintheoutcomeofoffspringprenatallyexposedtodrugsofabuse AT frauroberto genderdifferencesintheoutcomeofoffspringprenatallyexposedtodrugsofabuse AT melismiriam genderdifferencesintheoutcomeofoffspringprenatallyexposedtodrugsofabuse |