Host: The Japanese Society of Toxicology
Name : The 49th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Toxicology
Date : June 30, 2022 - July 02, 2022
About 10% of pregnant women suffer from depression during pregnancy along with physical ailments. The administration of psychotropic drugs to pregnant women should be done with caution, taking into consideration the safety of the fetus. For this reason, there is a growing demand for supplements that can be taken easily, and Cannabidiol (CBD) is one of the ingredients that is attracting attention. CBD is one of the major cannabinoids found in cannabis and has been reported to exhibit anxiolytic properties with no psychoactive effects. Therefore, it can be assumed that pregnant women will be taking CBD casually in the future to relieve their anxiety. However, there is a lack of knowledge about the effects on the fetus when CBD is used during pregnancy. In this study, the safety of CBD use during pregnancy to the fetus was analyzed from the perspective of pharmacokinetics and neural development. We first analyzed the transfer of CBD to the fetus and its brain in mid-pregnant mice using LC-MS. The results showed that CBD was rapidly transferred from the mother to the fetus, and also transferred into the fetal brain. In the fetal cerebral cortex, the differentiation of neural stem cells into neurons is active, and the six-layered structure of the cerebral cortex begins to form. Therefore, we next analyzed the effects of CBD on fetal neurogenesis. The results of this study suggest that CBD use during pregnancy may cause abnormalities in the layered structure of the cerebral cortex by promoting neural stem cell proliferation and decreasing neurons in layer IV.
