Cigarettes, Cocaine Peril Pregnancies

Two studies released last week document the dangers of pregnant women using cocaine and smoking cigarettes.

Women who use cocaine early in their pregnancies are nearly five times more likely to produce babies with serious birth defects, government researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. In a first-of-a-kind study, researchers found that pregnant women who used cocaine had a much greater chance of giving birth to babies with deformities in their kidneys or other parts of their urinary tracts.

Researchers believe that cocaine use during pregnancy may decrease the amount of oxygen getting to the developing fetus, causing malformations in the development of certain organs, such as the kidney, said Dr. Gilberto Chavez, an epidemiologist at the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta who conducted the study.

A Swedish study reported that women who smoke during pregnancy increase the risk of a late miscarriage by 40% and double the chance that their child may suffer crib death. The study, published in the Swedish Medical Assn.’s journal, was based on all 300,000 births in Sweden between 1983 and 1985.