VINCH - Vision IN CHildren
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Vision IN CHildren born to opioid-dependent, methadone maintained mothers - the VINCH study
IRAS ID
154022
Contact name
Ruth Hamilton
Contact email
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
We plan to re-investigate 150 children whom we have studied extensively in the past. 100 of these children were born to mothers who were prescribed methadone during their pregnancy because of opiate misuse ('drug-exposed children'), and 50 were comparison children who were not exposed to drugs. We investigated these children when they were newborn babies, and again when they were six months old, when we found that a quarter of the drug-exposed babies had problems with their eyesight, whilst very few of the comparison children has eyesight problems. We would like to see whether the eyesight problems are still present in the children now that they are older. Because they are older, we can undertake more detailed testing which will help us to understand how their drug exposure in the womb may have affected their eyesight. We would like to recruit new, comparison children to the study to match the number of comparison children with the number of drug-exposed children. The findings will be relevant and important when advising mothers on drug use - both prescribed and illicit - when they are pregnant.
We would like to invite all 150 children first recruited in 2008 and 2009 to return to the family-friendly Children's Clinical Research Facility in Glasgow for a single visit lasting about two hours. We plan to make the visit as short, varied and fun as possible. We will record general information about their social care and education as well as medical details, and then assess vision with multiple tests, none of which are painful or invasive. Carers will be asked to complete questionnaires about the children, and photographs will be used to take any evidence of fetal alcohol syndrome into account.
REC name
West of Scotland REC 3
REC reference
17/WS/0093
Date of REC Opinion
31 May 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion