Pregnant women who smoke predispose their children to do

Researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia have shown that snuff during pregnancy has a direct effect on the fetus in the predisposition to smoke, that is unleashed upon reaching adolescence.
Scientists have reached this conclusion after studying more than 3000 mothers and their children in a long-term work that began in 1981 and ended when the children born to the age of 21.
During that time able to compare the different habits of smoking mothers who did not leave the snuff during pregnancy, with those that dropped out during the nine months of pregnancy and the children of those who never smoked. The results are revealing: the proportion of youths who started smoking before age 14 tripled in infants of smokers and doubled after that age.
"It's like prenatal exposure to snuff could 'program' for future smoking," write the authors of the research in the Revista Tobacco Control.
Nicotine crosses the placenta and acts directly on the embryo and fetus during its development. In addition to other damages, the snuff "primes" the brain for attaching to nicotine at a critical time of brain development.

In Mexico, awareness campaigns are conducted that are gradually taking effect, but at the same time it was found that the population started smoking at an increasingly lower age.

Posted in: Pregnancy