Western News - Researchers working to uncover consequences of prenatal cannabis exposure - Western News

A team of Western researchers is working to improve our understanding of how exposure to cannabis during pregnancy may impact the developing brain of the fetus.

Sarikahya under the supervision of Steven Laviolette from the department of anatomy and cell biology at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, set out to study prenatal cannabis exposure in a pre-clinical animal model to bridge some of those knowledge gaps.  .

“A lot of people don’t understand that prenatal cannabis exposure hasn’t been that well researched, so we don’t really know the full impact of it on the developing brain,” said Sarikahya.

Using an animal model, the researchers discovered that prenatal exposure to THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, causes several severe impacts on a rat’s developing brain. .

The team demonstrated that the offspring of THC-treated rats had major losses in the levels of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids in the brain, especially in the regions involved in the processing of emotion and anxiety.  .

What was also surprising for the researchers was how severely the male model was impacted by prenatal cannabis exposure compared to the female models.  

Because dopamine is critical in helping to regulate emotion and anxiety, the team suspects these higher levels in the male may explain why they were more sensitive to the effects of prenatal cannabis exposure. 

Sarikahya with the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry

The research team is comprised of interdisciplinary researchers from the Addiction Research Group at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry, the department of anatomy and cell biology, departments of biochemistry and chemistry; physiology and pharmacology and obstetrics and gynaecology; psychiatry as well as Lawson Health Research Institute and Children’s Health Research Institute at St