Constance Guille
Medical University of South Carolina, SC·Medicine & Clinical Research
Most women who regularly use cannabis cut down or quit during pregnancy. Yet nearly 80% start again within 4–5 months after giving birth, despite possible harms to mother and newborn.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Psychology
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
cannabis use
marijuana
postpartum
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Use daily Ecological Momentary Assessment over 12 postpartum weeks to determine whether increases in stress, anxiety and craving, and declines in mood and sleep quality, are associated with return to cannabis use.
- Measure salivary progesterone to test whether, within individual postpartum women, falling progesterone levels are associated with resuming cannabis use.
- Test whether changes in progesterone are negatively correlated with subjective stress, and whether stress ratings mediate the relationship between progesterone and postpartum cannabis use.
More about the research
The weeks after birth are stressful. Stress, anxiety, low mood and poor sleep are common, and stress relief is the most common reason women give for postpartum cannabis use. Progesterone, a hormone that drops sharply after birth, may dampen drug reward and drug-seeking. This project asks how stress and progesterone shape the return to cannabis use after birth, with the long-term aim of preventing it.
Why it matters
Many postpartum women return to cannabis use despite potential risks to newborn and maternal health. By identifying stress, craving, sleep and hormonal signals that come before relapse, this work could inform targeted, sex-specific interventions. These could include progesterone- or stress-focused approaches to help women avoid returning to cannabis use after birth.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Cecilia Hinojosa
University of New Mexico, NM·Neuroscience·Early-career
Define sex differences in reward-related brain circuitry, including the striatum, that relate to alcohol craving and drinking in trauma-exposed women and men, using functional neuroimaging.
Anne Fairlie
University of Washington, WA·Psychology
Examine how the strength of links among nonmedical prescription stimulant use, alcohol and cannabis use, academic stress and sleep problems changes across the academic quarter, using 22 weekly surveys from 300 college students.
Dina Jones
University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Define how momentary negative mood and nicotine craving relate to smoking lapse within individuals, using phone-based ecological momentary assessment in up to 150 adults who smoke menthol cigarettes during a planned quit attempt.
The school
Medical University of South Carolina: 19 labs on PI Pages, $321M a year on research, 271 research doctorates a year.
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