Third-trimester fetuses with in utero opioid exposure exhibit smaller brain size on MRI
In accordance with an open-access Editor’s Alternative article in ARRS’ American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), third-trimester fetuses with in utero opioid publicity exhibited a number of smaller 2D biometric measurements of the mind, in addition to altered fetal physiology, on investigational MRI.
Noting the shortage of imaging literature evaluating prenatal opioid publicity on mind improvement, “our findings show the influence of prenatal opioid publicity on fetal mind improvement, which can in flip have an effect on postnatal medical outcomes,” wrote first writer Usha D. Nagaraj, MD, from Cincinnati Youngsters’s Hospital Medical Heart in Ohio.
Nagaraj and colleagues’ potential multicenter case-control research included 65 ladies (imply age, 29 years) of their third trimester of being pregnant who underwent fetal MRI from July 1, 2020 via December 31, 2021 at three U.S. educational medical facilities: Cincinnati Youngsters’s Hospital Medical Heart, Arkansas Youngsters’s Hospital, and the College of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A complete of 28 fetuses (imply gestational age, 32.3 weeks)
have been categorised as opioid-exposed, whereas 37 fetuses (imply gestational age, 31.9 weeks) have been unexposed in utero. Fourteen 2D biometric measurements of the fetal mind have been manually assessed and used to derive 4 indices.
When adjusting for gestational age, fetal intercourse, and nicotine publicity, 7 of the 14 2D biometric measurements-;cerebral fronto-occipital diameter, bone biparietal diameter, mind biparietal diameter, corpus callosum size, vermis top, anterior-posterior pons measurement, and transverse cerebellar diameter-;have been considerably smaller in opioid-exposed fetuses than in unexposed fetuses, as measured on fetal MRI.
“As well as,” the authors of this AJR article concluded, “fetuses with prenatal opioid publicity had elevated frequencies of breech presentation and of elevated amniotic fluid quantity.”
