Vaping during Pregnancy Negatively Impacts Prenatal Brain Development in Zebrafish, Study Suggests

Jan, 2021 - By WMR

According to a new collaborative research study by the researchers of University of Calgary and McMaster University have reported to found that vaping (Electronic Cigarette Aerosols) exhibit potential to negatively impact prenatal brain development in zebrafish. The research was focused on the impact of vaping chemicals on pregnant zebrafish.

Moreover, vaping can be defined as the practice of inhaling vapor produced by an electronic cigarette or similar device and initially believed to be safe by several users. Later several researchers tested to find whether vaping is actually safe and found mixed results, as nicotine is one of the core ingredient, which has negative impact on human health. In this study, researchers focused if vaping during pregnancy might have an impact on the fetus, they carried out experiment on zebrafish.

In this study, multiple pregnant zebrafish were exposed to several types of vape aerosol extracts. Some specimen were exposed to vape with flavors and some specimen were exposed to vape without added flavors, and those with and without nicotine. Furthermore, researchers allowed the eggs to fertilize and monitored the growing embryos PMR technique. The shells of fertilized zebrafish eggs are transparent.

Later, researchers observed that unflavored vapes had zero impact on zebrafish embryo brain development, whereas flavored vapes, exhibited notable impact on the behavior of the embryos, similarly as nicotine. Researchers observed that both vaping with flavoring and nicotine exhibited notable changes in the behavior of embryos, indicating that it has the potential to unfavorably impact prenatal brain development in zebrafish. Researchers concluded that further studies is required to determine the same in the case of humans.