Prenatal Cannabis Plus Teenage Stress Increased Risk-Taking in Mice

Prenatal cannabis exposure alone did not significantly affect anxiety, stress coping, or social behavior. However, when combined with chronic adolescent stress, mice showed significantly increased risk-taking behavior on the wire beam bridge task. Sex differences in prefrontal cortex c-Fos expression suggested different neural responses to the combined exposure.

Mouse dams consumed 5 mg/kg THC in whole cannabis oil daily from gestational day 1 through postnatal day 10. Offspring underwent chronic mild unpredictable stress throughout adolescence (PD28-56) and were tested on a battery of behavioral tasks starting at PD58.

Many children prenatally exposed to cannabis also grow up in stressful environments. This study shows these two factors may interact to produce behavioral effects that neither causes alone, specifically increased risk-taking.

The interaction between prenatal cannabis exposure and later-life stress aligns with the broader two-hit hypothesis in psychiatry, where early biological vulnerabilities combine with later environmental stressors to produce adverse outcomes that neither hit causes independently.

Animal study using oral whole cannabis oil, which differs from typical human consumption. Mouse behavior may not translate to human risk-taking. The stress paradigm (chronic mild unpredictable stress) is standardized but artificial.