Birth Defects with Marijuana


Birth Outcomes of Neonates Exposed to Marijuana in Utero
Greg Marchand, MD, Ahmed Taher Masoud, MD; Malini Govindan, MD, 2022, January 27

Among 16 studies including 59 138 patients, there were significant increases in 7 adverse neonatal outcomes among women who were exposed to marijuana during pregnancy vs those who were not exposed during pregnancy.
This study found that women exposed to marijuana in pregnancy were at a significantly increased risk of some adverse neonatal outcomes. These findings suggest that increasing awareness about these risks may be associated with improved outcomes.

Epidemiological overview of multidimensional chromosomal and genome toxicity of cannabis exposure in congenital anomalies and cancer development
Albert Stuart Reece & Gary Kenneth Hulse, 2021, July 6

Cannabis and cannabinoids are implicated in multiple genotoxic, epigenotoxic and chromosomal-toxic mechanisms and interact with several morphogenic pathways, likely underpinning previous reports of links between cannabis and congenital anomalies and heritable tumours.

We show that cannabis, THC cannabigerol and cannabichromene exposure fulfill causal criteria towards first Principal Components of both: (A) Down syndrome, Trisomies 18 and 13, Turner syndrome, Deletion 22q11.2, and (B) thyroid, liver, breast and pancreatic cancers and acute myeloid leukaemia, have mostly medium to large effect sizes, are robust to adjustment for ethnicity, other drugs and income in inverse probability-weighted models, show prominent non-linear effects, have 55/56 e-Values > 1.25, and are exacerbated by cannabis liberalization (P = 9.67 × 10–43, 2.66 × 10–15)…