Opioid use even before pregnancy could increase the risk that a mother’s male offspring will develop type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome – both leading risk factors for stroke.
The research from Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine is published in the journals, Addiction Biology and Scientific Reports.
In the Addiction Biology and Scientific Reports paper, the researchers looked at male rats born to mothers who were exposed to morphine for 10 days as adolescents.
The mothers were drug-free for at least three weeks before mating to ensure that their offspring were not exposed in the womb.
The mothers in the control group received a saline solution rather than morphine.
In the Adddiction Biology paper, the male offspring from mothers in both groups were fed a high fat-sugar diet for six weeks.
The males whose mothers were exposed to morphine consumed more, gained more weight and developed fasting-induced hyperglycemia (high blood sugars) and hyperinsulinemia (high circulating levels of insulin).
The findings suggest that the rats were becoming less able to regulate how their body converts fat into insulin, which can cause obesity, type 2 diabetes – both of which can increase stroke risk.
Cummings School professor and neuroscientist Elizabeth Byrnes, said:
“What we essentially saw is that the limited morphine exposure in female rats prior to conception increased the risk of metabolic disorders, including type 2 diabetes in the males in the next generation.”
In the paper for Scientific Reports, the researchers compared an eight and twelve-week administration of high fat-sugar diet or a controlled diet in the males whose mothers had been exposed to morphine and those who had received only saline.
Once again, the males whose mothers had been exposed to morphine gained more weight and displayed higher levels of fasting blood sugars and higher levels of circulating insulin than the non-morphine group.
And by extending the feeding regiment even longer, the male rats from morphine-exposed mothers in both groups also developed impaired glucose tolerance and liver abnormalities.
Byrnes said:
“Even if the offspring are not exposed to a high fat-sugar diet, the risks for developing diabetes and other health problems are there, though they may take longer to emerge.
“With such widespread use of opioids, we need think about all the ways that these drugs are affecting not only the current generation, but how they will impact future generations.”
More than 142 million opioid prescriptions were dispensed in the U.S. in 2020, according to the CDC.
