Children who smoke mothers can hear worse
Last reviewed: 16.10.2021
All iLive content is medically reviewed or fact checked to ensure as much factual accuracy as possible.
We have strict sourcing guidelines and only link to reputable media sites, academic research institutions and, whenever possible, medically peer reviewed studies. Note that the numbers in parentheses ([1], [2], etc.) are clickable links to these studies.
If you feel that any of our content is inaccurate, out-of-date, or otherwise questionable, please select it and press Ctrl + Enter.
If the future mother smokes during pregnancy, and also during the lactation period, then her baby may later have hearing problems. This information was shared by the head of one of the Japanese research groups, Professor Koji Kawakami, representing the University of Kyoto.
Everyone knows about the adverse effects of smoking: this fact is obvious and does not require any further evidence. However, the most negative is the intrauterine effect of nicotine on the unborn child. Both smoking and drinking alcohol by a future mother are factors in the development of serious health problems in the baby. The harmful habits of a woman are capable of turning themselves into different, distant consequences, and they can manifest themselves at different times. Sometimes such complications affect one or several systems of organs, sometimes - visual or auditory function. But, despite the extensive preventive work in this direction, many future mothers still are not in a hurry to give up cigarette dependence.
A new study of scientists was to monitor the health and developmental features of babies, starting at the age of three. All observed children were born in the period 2004-2010. Almost 4% of these children had their mothers smoked while pregnant. More than 15% of women, after learning about pregnancy, abandoned the addiction, but their babies still underwent a certain effect of nicotine in utero. About 4% of children were exposed to nicotine in the form of passive smoking for 4 months after birth. Moms of almost 1% of children did not give up smoking either during the gestation, or after the birth of the kids.
The subsequent processing of the information showed that the frequency of auditory function impairment in children up to 3 years of age was more than 4.5%.
The inhalation of cigarette smoke during pregnancy increased the risk of hearing disorders in children by almost 70%. If the mother smokes and is pregnant, and after the child is born, the danger of such pathologies increases almost 2.5 times.
According to Professor Kavakami, the results of the study indicate that preventive measures and the degree of education among the population should be improved and optimized. If a woman plans to become a mother in the near future, she should take care of the health of the future baby in advance. And think about this is a few years before conception, because the excretion of tar and nicotine from the body can take more than one year.
Is it worth it to put your own health and the health of the future baby at risk? And all this for the sake of a banal and useless habit? Scientists are turning to doctors and specialists from other areas to help protect the health of future generations.
The results of the study were published on its pages by the journal Wiley (http://newsroom.wiley.com/press-release/paediatric-and-perinatal-epidemiology/exposure-smoking-and-after-birth-linked-hearing-).
[