A study to estimate the prevalence of drug misuse in pregnancy (v.2)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
An epidemiological pilot study to investigate the methods suitable for the screening of drug misuse in pregnancy in the Colchester area.
IRAS ID
184542
Contact name
Catherine Street
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 10 months, 1 days
Research summary
Drugs used by pregnant women can cross the placenta into the baby. When the baby is born their drug supply is cut off, which can cause withdrawal symptoms (neonatal abstinence syndrome). In severe cases the baby may suffer fits or even die. Identifying affected babies before they have been discharged is difficult because symptoms can take up to 5 days to develop, by which time the levels of drug in the baby’s urine may be too low to detect. Also, mothers at high risk of drug misuse in pregnancy will often self-discharge quickly after delivery. Currently, pregnant women only have their urine tested for drugs when there is high suspicion of drug misuse, or there is a past history of drug use, which depends largely on pregnant women admitting to using drugs currently or in the past.
The purpose of this study is to find out how many pregnant women in the local area are ‘using’ drugs and what types of drugs are being used. The normal test we use is a urine dipstick, which detects six different classes of drug but doesn’t identify the exact drug being used. We want to use a more sophisticated testing method (mass spectrometry) to see exactly which drugs are currently in use and whether the dipstick method is detecting them all.
The urine specimens routinely provided at antenatal clinics will have all patient details removed and will be tested by dipstick (6 drug panel) and mass spectrometry (26 drug panel). We hope that the results will help us develop better ways of identifying at-risk babies before they are discharged so that they can be treated before their symptoms become severe. It will also inform us whether more antenatal care needs to be put in place to help pregnant women to stop using drugs.REC name
East of England - Essex Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/EE/0407
Date of REC Opinion
17 Nov 2015
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion