Test Country.com

Mothers who are painkiller abusers in their adolescent years are more likely to bear children who are also users according to a biomedical researcher at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University. The research (which could lead to a better understanding of familial patterns of drug abuse) effects as many as 1 million Americans who are addicted to opiates, which relieve pain by binding to receptors in the brain and spinal cord.

The research is particularly important now when teen girls are abusing prescription drugs like OxyContin and Vicodin regularly. From the ages of 12 to 17 the rate of drug abuse in boys and girls is about the same, but girls tend to abuse painkillers more at a time when their reproductive systems are undergoing rapid change. Using drugs in adolescence may affect fertility and maternal behavior later on, a history of drug abuse in the mother could increase the chances that her offspring will also abuse drugs.

For the research Byrnes exposed laboratory rats to opiates during puberty. They were then weaned from the drugs and allowed to grow into adulthood without those drugs before they were mated and they had children. When the offspring were given the same painkillers as their mothers had during puberty they were found to be more sensitive to them than those whose mother had no such exposure. Somehow the mother transmits that sensitivity from her exposure as an adolescent.

This research could tell us a great deal about the way drug abuse may affect genetics and in turn the line of addiction that tends to go through families.