This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on ISI (15)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Child Development  • Substance Abuse/ Alcoholism  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Effects of a Home Intervention and Ongoing Maternal Drug Use

Maureen E. Schuler, PhD; Prasanna Nair, MD, MPH; Laurie Kettinger, MS

Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2003;157:133-138.

Objective  To evaluate the effects of a home intervention and ongoing maternal drug use on the developmental outcome of drug-exposed infants.

Design  Longitudinal randomized cohort study of a home intervention with substance-abusing mothers and their infants. Mother-infant dyads were randomly assigned to a control or intervention group at 2 weeks' post partum. Control families received brief monthly tracking visits. Intervention families received weekly home visits from 0 to 6 months and biweekly visits from 6 to 18 months by trained lay visitors.

Participants  One hundred eight low-income, inner-city, drug-exposed children (control, 54; intervention, 54) who underwent developmental testing at 6, 12, and 18 months post partum and who remained with their biological mothers through 18 months.

Main Outcome Measures  Infant scores from the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (BSID) at 6, 12, and 18 months post partum. Maternal report of drug use during the pregnancy and ongoing drug use through 18 months post partum was assessed.

Results  In the repeated-measures analyses, intervention infants had significantly higher BSID Mental Developmental Index (MDI) and Psychomotor Developmental Index scores than control infants. Ongoing maternal cocaine and/or heroin use was associated with lower MDI scores. Finally, MDI scores decreased significantly in both groups.

Conclusions  Ongoing maternal drug use is associated with worse developmental outcomes among a group of drug-exposed infants. A home intervention led to higher BSID scores among drug-exposed infants. However, BSID MDI scores decreased during the first 18 months post partum among inner-city, low-socioeconomic-status infants in the present study.

From the Department of Pediatrics, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati     What's this?

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

A Long-term, Epidemiological Survey of Outcome and Adjustment of Children with Developmental Disabilities
Leitner et al.
J Child Neurol 2007;22:143-150.
ABSTRACT  

A Prospective Controlled Study of Neurodevelopment in HIV-Uninfected Children Exposed to Combination Antiretroviral Drugs in Pregnancy
Alimenti et al.
Pediatrics 2006;118:e1139-e1145.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Effects of substance abuse during pregnancy
Kassim and Greenough
The Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health 2005;125:212-214.