Fetal exposure to tobacco: nicotine and cotinine concentration in amniotic fluid and maternal saliva.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Fetal exposure to tobacco constituents is a risk factor for negative birth outcomes.

The researchers aimed to determine the relationships between nicotine and cotinine concentrations in amniotic fluid and maternal saliva.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as young adults and adults, women only.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

As part of a therapeutic trial, 42 pregnant smokers agreed to sample amniotic fluid (8 samples from amniocentesis, 34 at birth).

Their smoking characteristics were collected along with the newborns' birth outcomes.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Amniotic Fluid, Chromatography, Liquid, Cotinine, Linear Models, Maternal-Fetal Exchange, Nicotine and Saliva.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Birth weight, maternal smoking during pregnancy and prenatal tobacco exposure.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide).

Results are reported in around 6 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2017 (The journal of maternal-fetal & neonatal medicine : the official journal of the European Association of Perinatal Medicine, the Federation of Asia and Oceania Perinatal Societies, the International Society of Perinatal Obstetricians), a journal based in England.

More context: the Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) compound page, all human trials.