“…Cord blood concentrations of active metabolites norbuprenorphine and buprenorphine-glucuronide have been positively related with incidence of NAS requiring pharmacotherapy (Shah et al, 2016). However, most previous research has not found a relationship between maternal buprenorphine dose per se and NAS severity as defined by duration/incidence of NAS treatment, peak NAS score or duration of hospital stay (O’Connor et al, 2011; Jones et al, 2014; Bakstad et al, 2009; Metz et al, 2011), although one report suggested a relationship between dose and maximal NAS score that was not significant when the NAS score was above zero (Lejeune et al, 2006). Most of these studies did not consider other substance use (Jones et al, 2014; Lejeune et al, 2006) or considered only limited other substance use (Metz et al, 2011), were retrospective (O’Connor et al, 2011), used self-reported measures of other substance use as opposed to toxicology screens (Bakstad et al, 2009), or had small numbers of participants (O’Connor et al, 2011).…”