[DISRN] A recent analysis of more than 500,000 Canadian mothers and their children revealed a 50% increase in the risk of autism in kids whose mothers had used marijuana while pregnant, according to a report published Monday in Nature Medicine.Daniel Corsi, the study's lead author and adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa, and his colleagues parsed data from all Ontario births occurring from 2007 to 2012.
The 503,065 children analyzed — 3,148 of whom had mothers that had used cannabis while pregnant — were followed for an average of seven years. Exactly 7,125 were diagnosed with varying levels of autism.
Researchers found that the rate of autism diagnoses among children with in utero cannabis exposure was 2.2%. Of those whose mothers did not use the drug during pregnancy, only 1.4% were diagnosed with autism.