STUDY REPORTS EFFECTS OF PRENATAL COCAINE EXPOSURE ON IQ, LANGUAGE SKILLS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Exposure to cocaine before birth tends to give a
child a slightly lower intelligence score and a more pronounced
deficit in language skills, a new study says.

Researchers at Brown University analyzed studies involving more than
800 elementary-age children and found that those exposed to cocaine
before birth had IQ scores about 3.26 points lower than children born
to mothers who did not use cocaine while pregnant.

Dr. Barry M. Lester, Brown researcher and co-author of the study in
the journal Science, said Thursday that the finding was actually good
news.

"Ten or 15 years ago, it was thought that these kids were almost
beyond hope," said Lester. "But we find that the level of deficit can
be corrected with a proper intervention."

He said special training for children born to cocaine-using mothers
could compensate for both the intellectual and language loss.

The deficit in language skills experienced by the cocaine-exposed
children was about twice the loss in intellectual ability, Lester
said. Language researchers tested the children's ability both to
express themselves and to understand instructions. In both tests, the
children were below the performance of those who were not exposed to
cocaine in the womb.

Children in the study were aged 4 to 7, he said.

Lester said surveys designed to determine how many American children
are affected by prenatal cocaine exposure have given a wide range of
answers -- from 45,000 to 375,000. He said methods used in the surveys
are different and that the true number is "probably somewhere in the
middle."

Most children exposed before birth to cocaine are born into poverty, a
background that also affects intellectual and language scores, he said.

"Three IQ points wouldn't mean much in a middle-class context," said
Lester. "Add in poverty, and it kicks the score into the 80s. It puts
them at double jeopardy."

An IQ score of 100 is generally considered normal, he
said.

Special training to overcome intellectual deficits caused by prenatal
cocaine exposure would cost about $6,335 per child annually, and add
about $80 million to the nation's special-education costs, Lester estimated.

Language training for the children, he said, would be even more
expensive. He estimated the national cost at between $22 million and
$352 million annually.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry