Alcohol-the teratogen that keeps on giving.

Prenatal development is very sensitive. Everything that the mother takes the baby takes as well. Sometimes what a mother chooses to put into her body can be harmful for the baby. Alcohol is very detrimental to the development of a baby.  There have been several studies done on the effects of alcohol on unborn babies. What about the baby whose mother heavily abused alcohol during pregnancy and her baby appears to be healthy? Could there be some effects of prenatal alcohol exposure that appear years after birth? There have been several studies performed in an effort to better understand the long term effects on such infants. One such study was performed by San Diego State University in an effort to examine the visual-spatial and mathematics abilities of children with heavy prenatal alcohol exposure.

                In their study 56 children ages 7-12 were divided into two separate groups, the control group and the alcohol exposure group (AE). The control group consisted of 27 children whose mothers did not use alcohol during pregnancy. The AE group consisted of 29 participants whose mothers reported heavy alcohol use during pregnancy. Heavy alcohol exposure was defined to be an average of 14 drinks per week. (Crocker, Riley, & Mattson, 2014). The groups were closely related based on age, sex, ethnicity, school placement, handedness and socioeconomic status. Participants of this study were recruited through various means, but all were recruited as part of an ongoing study on the behavioral teratogenicity of alcohol. Each participant was administered 4 globally accepted test designed to measure visual-spatial and mathematics abilities.  

Exposure was confirmed via socials services, medical records and adoption records

                The results showed that AE participant’s performance was lower than those of their control group counterparts (Crocker, Riley, & Mattson, 2014). There were however limitations to their study. The sample size was small and although an effort was made to keep groups comparative in socioeconomic status it did not match for adoption. Several of the participants of the AE group were adopted and could have contributed negatively to the study.

                The study did however provide some valuable insight into some of the more possible long term effects of prenatal alcohol exposure. This study could lead to more research into long term effects on overall cognitive function in children born with heavy prenatal alcohol exposure.

 Abstract

Reference

Crocker, N., Riley, E. P., & Mattson, S. N. (2014). Visual-Spatial Abilities Relate to Mathematics Achievement in Children With Heavy Prenatal Alcohol Exposure. Neuropsychology, 1-10.