TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - A group of experts exchanged ideas at Florida State University Thursday about how to combat the ongoing opioid crisis in the U.S. and they’re paying attention to how the drugs affect pregnant mothers and their children.
Many women who use or abuse opioids begin taking the drugs before they conceive, and unknowingly expose their children to dependency.
Data from insurance claims indicates an increase in the rates, neo-natal abstinence syndrome, which is opioid dependence that occurs in babies whose mothers had used opioids during pregnancy.
”One thing that we know in Florida is that that rate has gone from 0.4 per 1,000 live births in 1999 to six per 1,000 live births in 2015 so that’s a 15 fold increase in something that we really need to take into account in order to understand the true scope of the epidemic," said Samantha Goldfarb, Assistant Professor in the FSU College of Medicine.
Children born addicted are often colicky, and have been known to suffer from cognitive impairments .
