HISTORY OF IN-UTERO COCAINE EXPOSURE IN LANGUAGE-DELAYED CHILDREN

To determine whether children with language delays are more likely to ha c e been exposed to cocaine in utero than children with normal lang uage development, a case-control study was undertaken. Based on routin e office screening in our primary-care clinic over a 1-year period, we identified 29 consecutive children, aged 24 to 48 months, as language -delayed. They were compared with an approximate 2:1 match of children without language delay who had been seen in the clinic on the same da ys and who were of similar age. There was more reported cocaine use du ring pregnancy (six of 29, 21%) among the language-delayed children th an among the controls (five of 71, 7%). This difference is statistical ly significant (P < 0.05, chi(2) = 3.92; odds ratio = 3.4 +/- 2.2). Di scriminant analysis revealed that both cocaine and nicotine exposure w ere associated with delayed language development - with an unexpected negative, i.e., an antagonistic, protective, interactive effect (F[3,9 6] = 4.66, R(2) = 12.7%, P<.005); neither gender nor caretaker contrib uted to language development in this sample. These results suggest tha t children with language delay detected in a clinical setting are more likely to have been exposed in utero to cocaine than children with no rmal language development. Prenatal cocaine exposure should be a risk factor in monitoring development in children.