Poster #87 - Exploring the effects of opioid use during pregnancy on mothers' RSA responses to infant cues

• In Event: 2-002 - Special Poster Session 05 with Continental Breakfast Reception
  In Poster Session: PS 05 - Interdisciplinary Section

Integrative Statement

Background and Purpose: The rate of opioid use during pregnancy has increased nearly five-fold during the past decade and costs $1.5 billion annually to support the mental health and medical needs of the pregnant woman and her baby. Prenatal opioid exposure is related to heightened risk for child welfare involvement and long-term cognitive delays in the child. Insights into the etiology of addiction and the neurobiology of parenting reveal overlapping brain circuitry, suggesting a relationship between addiction and parenting deficits. These findings led to the development of the reward-stress dysregulation model of addicted parenting (Rutherford & Mayes, 2017). This body of research suggests that as opioid use dysregulates reward circuitry in mothers’ brains, they experience an increase in stress reactivity to the infant. As infant cues becomes more stressful, mothers may experience difficulty regulating their negative affect, responding attentively to their infants, and engaging in behaviors that promote attachment (e.g., shared gaze). In this study, we aim to test the reward-stress dysregulation model of addicted parenting utilizing an infant cry stressor and psychophysiological data to explore the impact of opioid use on stress reactivity and recovery among pregnant women.

Hypothesis: Pregnant women using opioids will display increased stress reactivity and less effective recovery as measured by respiratory-sinus arrhythmia (RSA) during an infant cry stressor than women not using opioids during pregnancy.

Study population: We are recruiting pregnant women using opioids (total N = 50, current N = 12) from a high-risk prenatal clinic at the University of Utah. We have randomly selected data files from an existing data set of pregnant women (N = 114) without opioid use as comparators.

Method: We asked participants to watch a video during which an infant is playing and then begins to cry. Initially, participants watched a tranquil seascape scene during which baseline physiology was measured. Then, they watched an infant playing with her mother. Following this interaction on the video, the mother stops playing with the infant who immediately begins crying. After the cry stressor, there was a recovery period during which the mothers watched the tranquil A similar stimulus has been used in previous research and moderate increases in heart rate and decreases in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) were observed, indicative of a moderate response to stress (Ablow, Marks, Feldman, & Huffman, 2013).

Results: Women using opioids had a significantly lower resting RSA than women not using opioids (p = .049, [.01, 5.02]), indicating poor vagal control and poor regulatory capacity. Controlling for this difference in baseline RSA, we conducted a two-way repeated measures ANCOVA to compare the effect of opioid use on stress reactivity and recovery during the infant cry stressor. There was a significant main effect of opioid use on stress recovery F=(2, 6.0), p=0.04, η2=.67). There was a significant group by time effect at each time point for both groups.

Conclusion: This study may reveal one mechanism that contributes to the maintenance of substance use and parenting deficits.

Authors

• Sarah Priddy, University of Utah
  Presenting Author

• Celine Saenz, University of Utah
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marcela Smid, University of Utah
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sheila Crowell, University of Utah
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elisabeth Conradt, University of Utah
  Non-Presenting Author

• Eric Garland, University of Utah
  Non-Presenting Author