As More Babies Undergo Opiate Withdrawal, New Study Finds Children Born To Heroin Users Live Life With More Struggles

A new study claims that more and more babies undergo opiate and heroin withdrawal while another found out that children born to heroin users live life with a lot of struggles. Most babies experience shaking, vomiting and are suffering from diarrhea.

Dr. Sean Loudin, the medical director of a neonatal therapeutic unit at Cabell Huntington Hospital, said in a statement that children who were exposed to opioid and heroin while they were inside their mother's tummy are no longer exposed to the substance so they undergo withdrawal called neonatal abstinence syndrome. The outbreak of heroin overdoses started to increase in Huntington and West Virginia in September, Fox 8 reported. The number of addicted women giving birth to babies also increased.

Babies who undergo withdrawal have difficulty sleeping, are uncomfortable and are irritable. More serious side effects are growth delays and seizures, as per The Parkersburg News and Sentinel.

More on babies undergoing withdrawal, the increase is said to be 1.2 to 7.5 percent per 1,000 hospital births among rural infants and 1.4 to 4.8 per 1,000 hospital births of urban infants. The period studies are from 2003 to 2004 and 2012 to 2013.

Dr. Nicole Villapiano, the study's lead researcher and a pediatrician from C.S. Mott Children's Hospital at the University of Michigan, shared about the difference between urban and rural births that she is alarmed since the inequality continues to grow. Villapiano added that people need to focus on helping Americans deal with the problems of addiction, saying if the addiction will be treated, it will eventually reduce the number of babies born exposed to drugs.

As for children who were exposed to such drugs, they would have more struggles and difficulties as they grow. The effects of heroin and opioid exposure could affect them for the rest of their lives such as the dysfunction of the central nervous, autonomic nervous and respiratory systems. It could also affect the brain of children resulting in speech and social delays.