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Updated: Dec 13, 2025

Assessment and Evaluation of the High Risk Neonate: The NICU Network Neurobehavioral Scale
Published on: August 25, 2014
Adverse neonatal outcomes associated with maternal severe mental health diagnoses and opioid use
Jifeng Ma1, Vanita Sahasranaman2, Russell S Kirby3
1Florida Medicaid Drug Therapy Management Program for Behavioral Health, Department of Mental Health Law and Policy, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA. jifengma@usf.edu.
Objective:
Determine odds ratios for neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admissions for babies born to women associated with severe mental illness (SMI) and gestational opioid use.
Study Design:
A retrospective pharmacoepidemiologic study using Medicaid data included 17,130 mothers with and 170,430 mothers without SMI, and their babies. Odds ratios for NAS and NICU admissions among babies born to mothers associated with SMI diagnoses and associated with varying degrees of gestational opioid use were determined using logistic regression.
Results:
The adjusted odds ratio for a baby in the methadone or buprenorphine group having NAS was 168.93 [95% confidence interval (CI) 148.78-191.71, P < 0.001] and was 9.64 (95% CI 8.74-10.65, P < 0.001) for NICU admissions compared to babies with no opioid exposure.
Conclusions:
Chronicity of prescription maternal opioid use was the strongest factor associated with NAS and NICU admissions.
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