PREGNANCY Research shows drinking hurts children for years

The possible loss to a child's potential is a major concern, experts said.
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Children born to mothers who drink even small amounts of alcohol are shorter and weigh less at age 14 than children born to mothers who abstain, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh said.
Federal government guidelines have long said that no amount of alcohol is safe for a pregnant woman to drink, and Dr. Nancy L. Day, the study's principal investigator said the findings emphasize that.
"The message should be that women should not drink at all during pregnancy," Day said during a recent presentation.
The size gap found in the study is slight and falls within normal height and weight ranges, Day said, but was still surprising.
"I had actually thought that the growth deficits would go away after puberty," Day said.
Day found that even light drinking -- more than zero drinks a day to about 1.5 drinks a week -- had measurable effects on children years later.
Children born to women who were light drinkers in their first trimester weighed about three pounds less than children born to abstainers, and children born to heavy drinkers weighed up to 16 pounds less than children born to abstainers.
Lengthy study
Since 1982, Day has been studying the affects of alcohol on children whose mothers drank, tracking their progress at various ages. At age 14, physical measurements of 565 children were studied.
Day plans to continue tracking the children into early adulthood and will look at alcohol's cognitive affect.
"I'm really curious to see how they do when they start to take on the adult world," Day said.
The latest findings are being reported in the October issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
Dr. Sandra Jacobson, a psychiatrist at Wayne State University in Detroit, called the study well-controlled and the findings significant. She has been conducting a similar study.
"What's interesting here is the women are not alcoholic and not heavy drinkers and you still can detect the effects of alcohol on their children" so many years after birth, Jacobson said.
"It means the alcohol did something during the pregnancy period. The concern is, did it also affect any of the neurobehavioral development of the child?" Jacobson said.
The difference in growth, while statistically significant, is probably not biologically significant, Day said.
Still, Jacobson said, it represents "possible diminished potential."
Throughout the study, women reduced the amount of alcohol that they drank and by the third trimester, only 4 percent of the study participants said they continued to have one or more drinks a day.
"The good news from this study is that most women stop or greatly cut down on drinking as their pregnancies progress," Day said.
"The bad news is, the first trimester is an important one for a baby's future development and not all women come in this early for prenatal care. We, as a health-care community, need to address this issue."
"Overall, prenatal alcohol exposure is a major public health problem and Dr. Day's study is a reminder of the fact that these problems remain throughout childhood," said Dr. Louise Floyd, team leader of the fetal alcohol prevention team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.