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About 10% of pregnant women use nicotine products. These researchers studied rodents to learn more about how fetal exposure to nicotine contributes to abnormal brain development and behavioral abnormalities.
To avoid the stress of parenteral administration, the researchers administered nicotine or saccharine in drinking water to pregnant mice from conception through postpartum day 21 (weaning). Even though nicotine exposure ceased with weaning, it was associated with hypersensitive fear conditioning in adulthood (age, 3 months), as measured by avoidance of a subthreshold shock that mice would normally ignore. Prenatal-to-weaning nicotine exposure and postnatal-only exposure until weaning were associated with increased dendritic spine density…