Opioid-exposed babies react more strongly to pain

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Babies exposed to opioids while their mothers were pregnant may need special care even before they start to experience withdrawal symptoms, researchers say.

A new study reports that as soon as 24 and 48 hours after birth, babies exposed to opioids prenatally reacted more strongly to pain and scored higher on a skin conductance test, which measures the electrical differences in skin in response to pain or stress.

“These babies are responding to pain differently than babies who were not exposed, so maybe we should be paying attention to pain management earlier,” says Christiana Oji-Mmuo, assistant professor of pediatrics at Penn State. “If we have to do a painful procedure like a heel lance, we may have to provide extra comforting measures, both during the procedure and after if they continue to be stressed.”

As opioid use continues to be a problem in the US, so does the risk of babies being born with neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS). Oji-Mmuo says an estimated 55 to 94 percent of babies born to mothers who used opioids during pregnancy will develop NAS.

Opioids block the release of norepinephrine, a chemical released in the body during times of stress, the researchers say. When a baby is born and no longer experiences opioid exposure, the baby experiences a spike in norepinephrine and other chemicals and hormones in the body, which can cause symptoms such as irritability, eating poorly, sweating, fever, and seizures, among others.

While there are guidelines for screening babies at risk for developing NAS, there is a need for better, objective tools to help predict it and its severity earlier in newborns, Oji-Mmuo says.

“To best take care of these babies, it’s important that we recognize babies who are going through withdrawal very early. We wanted to see if two different tests—skin conductance measures and facial reactions to pain—would correlate and predict withdrawal in newborns, because we really need accurate ways to assess these babies.”

Researchers enrolled 37 newborns—22 with prenatal opioid exposure and 15 healthy controls for the study. To measure the babies’ reaction to pain, they video-recorded newborns undergoing a heel stick, a standard procedure that most newborn babies undergo to give blood for screening tests.

To measure skin conductance, researchers applied a noninvasive device with three electrodes to one foot. The device measured electrical conductance in the skin, which can change when norepinephrine boosts sweat production.

An analysis of the data showed that the babies exposed prenatally to opioids had higher skin conductance and reacted more strongly to pain during and after the heel-stick procedures. Additionally, the babies with opioid exposure remained stressed after the procedure was over and they were swaddled and tucked in.

Oji-Mmuo says the results, which appear in the Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine, suggest that babies who are born exposed to opioids handle pain worse than babies not exposed.

“Even after the painful procedure was over, they continued to have higher skin conductance,” Oji-Mmuo says. “Even when the procedure was done and they’d been swaddled, they continued to have these higher measures compared to the babies who hadn’t been exposed to opioids.”

The Children’s Miracle Network and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health supported the work.

Source: Penn State