Bibliographic record
Abstract
The effect of prenatal cannabis exposure on offspring is an important clinical and societal concern which has limited evidence. Compounds in the cannabis plant, phytocannabinoids, cross the placental barrier and thus may act on the developing embryo. To address the knowledge gap, here I created and characterized a murine exposure model to explore potential postnatal effects of prenatal exposure to cannabinoids. The model involved administering cannabinoids – the synthetic cannabinoid nabilone and principal phytocannabinoids (−)-trans-Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) or cannabidiol (CBD) – via subcutaneous injection prior-to and throughout gestation. Herein, I describe effects of these gestational exposures on 1) the behavioural and neuroimaging outcomes in adulthood, and 2) the effects on peripheral immune cell populations. I assessed neuroanatomy in prenatally nabilone, THC, or CBD exposed offspring by magnetic resonance imaging. I found that prenatal nabilone exposure had sex-specific effects on neuroanatomy in juvenile (3-week-old) and adult (9-week-old) offspring. In juvenile mice, the amygdala volume was lower in females and higher in males exposed to nabilone compared to vehicle controls. In adult nabilone-exposed offspring, the basal forebrain was larger in females and smaller in males compared to vehicle controls. In prenatally CBD-exposed offspring, the volume of the arbor vitae of the cerebellum was larger compared to vehicle controls. Prenatal THC did not affect neuroanatomy. I also performed a battery of behaviour tests beginning at the 9-week timepoint in adult THC and CBD-exposed offspring. I found that both compounds produced an anxiolytic phenotype in males in the elevated plus maze. CBD affected novelty exploration in the novel object recognition test in females only. Thus, prenatal THC and CBD exposure produced sex-specific effects on behaviour in adulthood. Using cytometry by time-of-flight, spleen and thymus immune cell populations were quantified at two timepoints in CBD- and THC-exposed offspring. Prenatal THC, but not CBD, affected T cell populations in the neonatal thymus and juvenile spleen. From these results, I conclude that a disturbance in the developmental period caused by exposure to exogenous cannabinoids results in long-term effects to brain and immune systems. These consequences are compound- and sex-specific. Future work should focus on elucidating mechanisms underlying these changes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".