Links to autism found in drug used to anaesthetize child patients

Local medical experts working with international peers have discovered that fentanyl, one of the most widely used opioid analgesics in anaesthesia, can cause autism-like behaviors in young mice.

The research used animal experiments to imitate the process of young children receiving fentanyl in anaesthesia during multiple surgeries. Its results showed that fentanyl can trigger autism-like behavior in young mice by influencing the brain's receptor gene Grin2b.

The research is the first to demonstrate fentanyl's possible influence on animals.

Fentanyl is a common anaesthesia used in children's surgery and its effects on their brains and cognition abilities are always a hot topic, said Shen Yuan from Tongji University, one of the chief researchers in the study.

During their experiments, experts injected fentanyl into 6-day-old female and male mice and repeated the dose two and four days later. They found the mice started to show autism-like behavior on the 30th day after birth.

No such effects were found in mice that received a fentanyl dose plus a dose of another drug one hour later to reduce the effects of fentanyl. Also, mice's autism-like behaviors, such as anxiety and social disorder, were eased after receiving injection to inhibit Grin2b expression.

However, the experts stressed there is no clinical research to indicate that fentanyl has the same impact on humans, and anesthesia use during surgery is a complicated process with multiple factors.

They hoped this research will push more future studies to deeply probe the influence of anaesthesia on the brain.

The research findings were published in the British Journal of Anaesthesia.