Low levels of alcohol ‘harm unborn babies’

MOTHERS could be permanently damaging their babies by drinking even low levels of alcohol during pregnancy, researchers warned yesterday.

Serious problems, such as severe learning disabilities and physical abnormalities, can occur when women drink large amounts of alcohol when they are pregnant, leading to foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS).

But US researchers yesterday said studies now needed to look at the damage caused by prenatal exposure to alcohol at lower levels.

Julie Croxford, from Wayne State University in Detroit, said: “In the past, much focus was placed on studying the full-blown FAS. More recent research has considered those individuals damaged by lower levels of exposure. This is an important focus.”

The latest study, published in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, confirmed moderate to heavy prenatal alcohol exposure affected youngsters’ cognitive function.

The researchers found youngsters had slower processing speeds and efficiency, particularly when tasks involved memory.

The study involved 337 African-American children, aged seven-and-a-half, who had been exposed to moderate to heavy levels of alcohol in the womb.

The researchers found the alcohol-exposed children were able to perform memory, number and other tasks as well as other youngsters when these tasks were simple. But when the children were pressed to respond quickly, their processing speed slowed down significantly.

Researcher Matthew Burden said: “Prenatal alcohol exposure is often associated with slower reaction times and poorer attention in infancy, and some of these deficits may be at the core of poorer academic performance and behaviour problems often seen later in childhood.

“In cases of FAS, lower IQ scores are common, often reaching the level of retardation. This is because alcohol consumed by the mother has a direct impact on the brain of the foetus.”