title: Prenatal exposure to nicotine and impaired reading performance.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To investigate whether prenatal exposure to nicotine has an impact on several reading skill outcomes in school age children.
  
  
  METHODS
  Using a longitudinal sample of 5119 school age children in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, this study investigated specific reading skill outcomes in the area of speed, fluency, accuracy, spelling, and comprehension in relation to prenatal nicotine exposure, after adjusting for potential mediators and confounders. Prenatal nicotine exposure was divided into 3 categories: high (>17 mg per day), low (≤17 mg per day), and no exposure.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We found that prenatal nicotine exposure was associated with increased risk of underperformance in specific reading skill outcomes after adjusting for potential mediators and confounders (P = .006). The effect of poor performance in decoding single words was most pronounced among children with prenatal exposure to high levels of nicotine in conjunction with a phonological deficit. Overall, the results showed that maternal smoking has moderate to large associations with delayed or decreased reading skills of children in the Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  High prenatal nicotine exposure has a negative association with reading performance in school age children. In addition, modeling showed that environmental factors significantly moderated the interaction between prenatal nicotine exposure and reading skill outcomes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06520, USA. chokelly@gmail.com
authors.forename: Kelly
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Cho
authors.forename: Jan C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Frijters
authors.forename: Heping
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Laura L
authors.initials: LL
authors.lastname: Miller
authors.forename: Jeffrey R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Gruen
mesh_terms: D001289:Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology*; D002648:Child; D015331:Cohort Studies; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology*; D004777:Environment; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007361:Intelligence Tests; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D009035:Mothers; D009538:Nicotine / Q000009:adverse effects*; D011247:Pregnancy; D011297:Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects / Q000139:chemically induced*; D011932:Reading; D012306:Risk; D012907:Smoking / Q000009:adverse effects*
chemical_list: D009538:Nicotine