Health and neurodevelopment of children born to opioid-dependent mothers at school entry

Objective:
To examine the school readiness of a regional cohort of prenatally methadone-exposed children across 5 domains and to examine factors contributing to impairment risk.

Methods:
Data were drawn from a single-center, prospective longitudinal study. One hundred children born to women in methadone maintenance treatment and 110 randomly identified non–methadone-exposed children were studied from birth (2003–2008) to age 4.5 years. At 4.5 years, children underwent comprehensive assessment of their physical/motor development, social-emotional skills, approaches to learning, language development, and cognitive functioning. Predictors of children's overall school readiness were examined, including the extent of prenatal substance exposure (number and quantity of different substances), social risk, maternal mental health, infant clinical factors, and the quality of the home environment at age 18 months Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) score.

Results:
Methadone-exposed children had higher rates of delay/impairment across all outcome domains (odds ratios 4.0–5.3), with 72% impaired in at least 1 domain. Multiple problems were also common, affecting 48% of methadone-exposed children compared with 15% of control children. The mean number of school readiness domains impaired increased, with increasing prenatal substance exposure (rate ratio [RR] = 1.05 [1.01–1.11]), higher social risk (RR = 1.35 [1.20–1.53]), male sex (RR = 1.69 [1.27–2.25]), and lower HOME scores indicating a poorer quality postnatal environment (RR = 0.96 [0.94–0.99]).

Conclusion:
Children born to opioid-dependent mothers are at high risk of impaired school readiness, with multiple domain problems being common. Impaired school readiness was associated with greater maternal prenatal substance use, higher social risk, male sex, and lower‐quality caregiving environments.