A Few Sips Of Wine A Week During Pregnancy Doesn't Harm Baby In Long Run, Researchers Say

Drinking alcohol during pregnancy has long been considered an absolute no-no. Now researchers are telling us a few sips of wine a week may be OK.

The findings published in the 17 April 2013 edition of BJOG: The British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, expand on earlier observations that heavy drinking during pregnancy definitely carries high risk of damage to the child.

Like several other observational studies before it, this research looked into the possibility that light drinking during pregnancy does harm the child.

The researchers identified 10,534 mothers of newborns in the UK, and asked them about their consumption of alcohol during pregnancy. The responses of the mothers indicated that:

• 57.1% of mothers did not drink during pregnancy, although they drink when they are not pregnant,
• 23.1% of mothers drank "lightly" during pregnancy, "lightly" defined as up to 2 alcohol units per week, the equivalent of 2 glasses of wine (175 ml per glass, 12.7% alcohol content),
• 12.7% of mothers did not drink alcohol at any time, whether they were pregnant or not, and
• 7.2% of mothers drank heavily during pregnancy.

Then when the children turned 7 years of age, the researchers asked parents and teachers to fill out questionnaires about the child's behavior patterns, with special attention to hyperactivity an other early indicators of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and they also tested the children's math and reading skills.

The British scientists were concerned about the differences between the children of the 69.8% of mothers who did not drink at all during pregnancy (the 12.7% who are teetotalers and the 57.1% who give up alcohol during pregnancy only) and the children of the 23.1% of mothers who drank up to 2 units of alcohol per week while they were pregnant. Numerous news stories report that there were no differences in the two groups of children, but that's not what the study actually found. Even after "statistical adjustment:"

• Both boys and girls born to mothers who drank lightly during pregnancy scored slightly lower on reading tests (within the range of statistical significance) and
• Boys born to mothers who drank lightly during pregnancy had significantly slower development of eye-hand coordination.

The researchers conclude that environmental influences after birth are likely to be more important in a child's development than whether or not the mother drank lightly during pregnancy, but it is inaccurate to say that this study found that there were no differences between the two groups of children at all. How does this finding stack up with other studies?

The Effects Of Light Drinking During Pregnancy May Not Show Up Until Late Childhood

This latest study on the effects of light drinking during pregnancy is the sixth study published just in the journal BJOG. There are over 100 studies of the effects of light drinking by expectant mothers that report a variety of results.

• The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children tracked 10,558 children to age 11. The study did not find a "dose-dependent" relationship between drinking during pregnancy and the children's mental development at age 11, but noted that children of mothers who drank any amount of alcohol at all were more likely to report behavioral problems in their children at age 11. Because the findings did not support a distinction between heavy drinking and light drinking, the researchers ignored them.

• A smaller study of women in Cape Town, South Africa led by researchers from Children's Hospital Boston in the United States found that a combination of iron-deficiency anemia and heavy drinking during pregnancy led to developmental delays that could not be alleviated by iron supplementation and making sure the child had food security after birth. The effects of the combination of iron-deficiency anemia and alcohol abuse were clearly visible at the child's ninth birthday.
• Studies of 11,513 British children in the UK Millennium Cohort Study even found that children of women who had consumed up to two alcoholic drinks a week during pregnancy had higher test scores at the age of 5. Girls had higher scores on tests of vocabulary and pattern construction, and boys had higher scores on tests of vocabulary, pattern construction, and picture similarity.
• Dutch scientists examining 7,333 women during pregnancy in the Generation R Study found no consistent pattern in the development of the fetus based on the drinking habits of the mother.

So should mother emulate the example of American MTV's Snooki Polizzi, who got drunk on a dare after her pregnancy test came out positive? Or should they give up drinking for the rest of their reproductive lives just in case they drink during the first few days or pregnancy, before the pregnancy is normally detectible?

The answer seems to be that there is no consistent pattern of damage to the unborn child based on the mother's drinking during pregnancy. However, there are probably other factors that interact with alcohol consumption that make a difference to the child that scientists simply have not identified. Until scientists have a better understanding of the issues of alcohol and fetal development, abstinence is still a good idea.