This recent PNAS paper uses a nonhuman primate model of fetal brain development in combination with non-invasive PET and MRI analysis. The study shows that in addition to the known effects of cocaine on placental circulation there was also a detectable direct pharmacological effect to the developing fetal brain.
Cocaine use during pregnancy is deleterious to the newborn child, in part via its disruption of placental blood flow. However, the extent to which cocaine can affect the function of the fetal primate brain is still an unresolved question. Here we used PET and MRI and show that in third-trimester pregnant nonhuman primates, cocaine at doses typically used by drug abusers significantly increased brain glucose metabolism to the same extent in the mother as in the fetus (∼100%). Inasmuch as brain glucose metabolism is a sensitive marker of brain function, the current findings provide evidence that cocaine use by a pregnant mother will also affect the function of the fetal brain. We are also unique in showing that cocaine’s effects in brain glucose metabolism differed in pregnant (increased) and nonpregnant (decreased) animals, which suggests that the psychoactive effects of cocaine are influenced by the state of pregnancy. Our findings have clinical implications because they imply that the adverse effects of prenatal cocaine exposure to the newborn child include not only cocaine’s deleterious effects to the placental circulation, but also cocaine’s direct pharmacological effect to the developing fetal brain.
Cocaine is pharmacologically active in the nonhuman primate fetal brain. Benveniste H, Fowler JS, Rooney WD, Scharf BA, Backus WW, Izrailtyan I, Knudsen GM, Hasselbalch SG, Volkow ND. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010 Jan 4. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 20080687
More? UNSW Embryology – Abnormal Development – Illegal Drugs | Neural System Development
