i'm doing a questionnaire! x "Drinking heavily during pregnancy may cause serious health problems in some - but there may be subtle signs of brain damage even in those spared this.
A UK expert says that the latest evidence suggests that it may be safer for women to abstain completely during pregnancy.
Cases of "foetal alcohol syndrome" are well documented.
Babies of heavy-drinking mothers can develop a wide range of physical and neurodevelopmental problems.
However, some babies appear to be far less affected, and it can be harder to measure the extent of the problem.
Even children with equivalent IQ may have different levels of damage.
A team of scientists from San Diego State University has used the reaction time of children to check for subtle brain damage perhaps sustained during pregnancy.
The theory is that reaction time shows how fast different parts of the brain are working.
Slow reaction
They took two groups of children - one known to have been pre-natally exposed to alcohol, and another non-exposed group.
The activity of the muscles in the upper arm were measured to spot the moment when impulse to move reaches the fibre.
The children were given simple reaction tests - and also more complex tests involving making choices between different actions.
While both groups performed similarly well on the simple test, those exposed to alcohol did significantly worse on the complex tests.
The adult liver may be able to clear large amounts of alcohol from the body in 12 hours - but the undeveloped foetal liver might not do this for two days
Professor Peter Hepper, Queen's University Belfast
This could be because they involve more areas of the brain, which may have been damaged.
Professor Sandra Jacobson, one of the researchers, said: "Even when you control for IQ, the children who are heavily exposed process information and react more slowly."
Professor Roger Simmons, another of the team, added: "The performance of the older, alcohol-exposed children was similar was often very similar to the performance of the younger, nonexposed children.
"We believe that exposure to alcohol results in damage to the brain and peripheral structures, which results in timing deficits."
Warning note
Professor Peter Hepper, of Queen's University, Belfast, said that there was a growing body of evidence linking even moderate alcohol use in pregnancy to deficits in children.
He said: "If it was proven that drinking any amount of alcohol in pregnancy caused you to be born with the tip of your finger missing - something that would hardly affect your life at all - then it would be banned instantly.
"However, even though it might be affecting your brain development, there is no similar response."
He said that the trend towards binge drinking in women was a growing concern.
"The adult liver may be able to clear large amounts of alcohol from the body in 12 hours - but the undeveloped foetal liver might not do this for two days.
"There is a great potential for damage."
He said that his advice would now be for mothers to avoid alcohol altogether where possible - although he conceded there might be examples where this was difficult.
A spokesman for Alcohol Concern said that as long as the pregnancy woman drank no more than a couple of units a week, there should be no problem.
This is the advice of the Department of Health and the Royal College of Midwives." yes! Yes, its awful. I know someone with FAS, and they will NEVER be normal. Yes...retardation, facial dyfigurement, learning disability, ADD, increases chance of abusing alcohol themselves ect. Alcohol (wine, beer, or liquor) is the leading known preventable cause of mental and physical birth defects in the United States.
When a woman drinks alcohol during pregnancy, she risks giving birth to a child who will pay the price 鈥?in mental and physical deficiencies 鈥?for his or her entire life.
Yet many pregnant women do drink alcohol. It's estimated that each year in the United States, 1 in every 750 infants is born with a pattern of physical, developmental, and functional problems referred to as fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), while another 40,000 are born with fetal alcohol effects (FAE).
Signs and Symptoms of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
If you adopted a child or consumed alcohol during pregnancy and are concerned that your child may have FAS, watch for characteristics of the syndrome, which include:
low birth weight
small head circumference
failure to thrive
developmental delay
organ dysfunction
facial abnormalities, including smaller eye openings, flattened cheekbones, and indistinct philtrum (an underdeveloped groove between the nose and the upper lip)
epilepsy
poor coordination/fine motor skills
poor socialization skills, such as difficulty building and maintaining friendships and relating to groups
lack of imagination or curiosity
learning difficulties, including poor memory, inability to understand concepts such as time and money, poor language comprehension, poor problem-solving skills
behavioral problems, including hyperactivity, inability to concentrate, social withdrawal, stubbornness, impulsiveness, and anxiety vrey much so, I live in an area where foetal alcohol syndrome is reaching eppedemic porportions and I think pregnant woman should be prosecuted for drinking during pregnancy |
