Most women, when pregnant, do everything they can to protect the life they have growing inside them. Knowing this, it’s tough to understand why a growing number of drug users across the country continue to feed their addiction while carrying their baby to term — or even why they got pregnant in the first place.

But addiction can be so gripping it wipes out common sense. Physicians are trying to figure out how best to protect mom and baby.

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“This is a worldwide issue that needs to be addressed,” said Dr. Craig Towers, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist with High Risk Obstetrical Consultants at the University of Tennessee Medical Center (UTMC), and the lead physician on a new study.

Towers said drug users are typically aware that if they share needles or syringes, there is a very high risk of getting infected with HIV/AIDS. It is why he sees expecting moms increasingly turning to snorting their drug of choice, thinking that it’s somehow safer. But a study he just wrapped up shows that sharing straws still puts mom and baby at tremendous risk.

“The idea that ‘if you snort, don’t share straws’ needs to be communicated around the globe as the use of snorting straws for drug use is a common practice.”

Towers was conducting another study on detox during pregnancy when he made the discovery. Appalachia has a high concentration of opioid-addicted pregnant women — and newborns go through horrendous withdrawals.

“In taking care of this population, we discovered at least two-thirds of these pregnant women were also infected with Hepatitis C,” Towers told LifeZette.

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“When we would talk with them about how they’re doing and how the pregnancy is going and how they’re doing with the opiate program, then tell them they were infected with Hepatitis C, they would look at us and say, ‘That’s not possible. How can I be infected with Hepatitis C? I’ve never used IV drugs.'”

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The 16-month study (March of 2014 through June of 2015) was done through an anonymous survey distributed to 189 women who had tested positive for Hepatitis C (also know as HCV) after routine blood testing at Towers’ obstetrics clinic at UTMC.

Of the study’s participants, 133 participants (70 percent) did not have any idea when they had become infected with HCV, and 127 (67 percent) were first told they had HCV after the prenatal lab work that was obtained during routine prenatal care. Additionally, of the women surveyed, 164 (92 percent) reported sharing snorting straws.

Testing for Hepatitis C has now become part of his clinic’s routine prenatal testing.

“Previous reports have shown a 364 percent increase in HCV infections from 2006 to 2012 in the central Appalachian region,” said Towers. “The main concern is the transmission of any blood-borne virus, but a huge potential impact of the sharing of snorting utensils is the threat of transmitting HIV, which is more serious than HCV. If HIV were to enter the blood pool of this population, an increase in this serious infection might also develop.”

When newborns get infected, they have a much higher rate of cirrhosis and carcinoma 15 to 20 years later.

Towers is now talking with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology about how best to get the word out.

HCV is the most common chronic blood-borne infection in the United States. It affects the liver and can range in severity from a mild illness to a serious, chronic disease. Those who believe they’re immune because they don’t use drugs are fooling themselves — it can be transmitted not just through drug use but through blood transfusion, organ transplants, sexual contact, and tattoos.

The World Health Organization estimates that between 130 and 150 million people are infected with Hepatitis C worldwide. Among the increasing populations affected in the U.S. are baby boomers — and they are simply unaware they have it.

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Fortunately, HCV doesn’t make a pregnancy high-risk. The biggest issue, Towers said, is the roughly 5-8 percent risk of transmission to newborns. When newborns are infected with viruses like HCV or Hepatitis B, they have a much higher rate of cirrhosis and carcinoma 15 to 20 years down the road.

“The question is: How many babies have been infected? And we don’t know because we haven’t tested the moms. On this, you really have to watch the baby for 6 to 18 months to determine infection,” Towers said.

“Fortunately, now there are treatments for HCV that can sometimes cure it, but I don’t know if they’ve determined how young you can be to take those medications. The number of women and men infected with this and their risk for chronic liver disease, liver failure, and cancer — we have to identify them and get them treated and cured, and then do the same with the newborn.”

Towers said the next phase of his research will study the risk of HCV being transmitted to babies during birth. The results of this research have been published in Obstetrics & Gynecology (The Green Journal).