Daily HealthBeat Tip - July 09, 2007

Moms’ drugs and kids’ speech

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

What a woman does while she’s pregnant can affect the baby she’s carrying. Researchers found another example of that when they looked at children of women who used cocaine while they were pregnant.

Barbara Lewis of Case Western Reserve University was checking the language skills of these children – things like speaking and understanding. Her study in the American Academy of Pediatrics’ journal Pediatrics was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

"Children exposed to cocaine in utero performed more poorly than children who were not exposed to cocaine at each time point – 2, 4 and 6 years of age." (10 seconds)

Although the children improved, they never caught up.

But Lewis believes they can benefit from language training, and from moms working with them every day, helping them to develop language – things like reading to the kids.

Learrn more at hhs.gov.

Last revised: July, 09 2007