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University at Buffalo pediatrician Praveen Chandrasekharan first heard of kratom in 2017 when a newborn girl was admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit at John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital in Buffalo, New York, where he works as a neonatologist. The baby was jittery, had stiff muscles, sneezed a lot, and cried excessively—symptoms of neonatal abstinence syndrome, a withdrawal from drugs they were exposed to in the womb.
Puzzlingly, the girl’s urine tested negative on a toxicology screen for opioids. The 29-year-old mother told doctors that she had been taking an herbal supplement known as kratom in the form of pills to ease her lower back pain while she was pregnant.
Digging into the literature, Chandrasekharan learned that kratom, or Mitragyna speciosa, is an evergreen tree native to Southeast Asia, where people there have taken it recreationally and for medicinal purposes. In recent years, it ...
