Date Thesis Awarded
5-2024
Access Type
Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only
Degree Name
Bachelors of Science (BS)
Department
Neuroscience
Advisor
Madelyn Labella
Committee Members
Adrian Bravo
Sarah Menefee
Abstract
Background: Pregnant women who have opioid use disorder (OUD) are a growing population at elevated risk for poor health outcomes, including miscarriage or stillbirth, infections, chronic diseases, and psychiatric conditions. Few studies exist in the literature that simultaneously consider maternal and infant health outcomes when quantifying the effects of OUD and correlated risk factors (e.g., socioeconomic disadvantage, polysubstance use). Our study leverages medical records to provide a rich description of mother-child health outcomes in the context of prenatal substance exposure. We hypothesized that both mothers and infants would experience high rates of health complications during pregnancy, labor, and delivery; we also hypothesized that substance use variables would be significantly associated with both maternal and infant outcomes.
Methods: Participants were 54 mothers of 55 infants undergoing treatment for OUD who were enrolled in a longitudinal clinical trial of an attachment-based parenting intervention. Measures of prenatal substance use were examined in tandem with information gathered from maternal medical records to describe the incidence of different maternal obstetric, physical, and psychiatric outcomes and select infant outcomes. Comparisons between this sample and community samples were performed using single-sample t-tests. Independent samples t-tests were used to investigate the various effects of insurance coverage, substance use, and methadone exposure. Researchers performed correlations to relate maternal and infant outcomes from data on substance use and followed up on significant correlations with multinomial regressions, controlling for demographic variables.
Results: The current sample was characterized by elevated socioeconomic risk and poor maternal health outcomes, including high rates of obstetric complications, physical health problems, and psychiatric conditions. Mothers in our sample had significantly higher rates of negative obstetric outcomes, depression, and Hepatitis C than in seen pregnant community comparisons. In contrast, infants largely met normal growth and health benchmarks. Substance use did not significantly predict maternal health outcomes in our sample, but methadone exposure and polysubstance exposure significantly predicted infant birth outcomes.
Conclusion: The current study highlights the particular health outcomes that mothers with OUD and their infants may experience and reinforces existing data that correlates poorer infant outcomes with in-utero substance exposure. Ongoing data collection will allow researchers to draw more accurate comparisons and conclusions regarding the effects of substance use on maternal health.
Recommended Citation
Windham, Ellen, "Health Characteristics of Pregnant Women with Opioid Use Disorder and Their Infants" (2024). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 2136.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/2136
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