Larkby, Cynthia, & Day, Nancy. (1997 June 22). The effects of prenatal alcohol exposure. Alcohol Health & Research World, 21, 192-198.
Pregnant alcoholic women risk the health of their offspring in multiple ways: (1) Exposure to alcohol during gestation may lead to fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) or fetal alcohol effects; (2) the physical consequences of alcoholism in the mother (e.g., falls or malnutrition) may independently affect the developing fetus; (3) genetic vulnerability to alcoholism in the fetus may increase the effects of prenatal exposure; and (4) the lifestyle of an alcoholic parent may lead to negative consequences for the fetus, the pregnancy, and the developing child. This article addresses the first of these issues - the effects of exposure to alcohol during gestation - in detail. However, any or all of the other issues listed (i.e., concomitant genetic background and the physical and lifestyle deficits that accompany alcoholism) may exacerbate the adverse effects of prenatal alcohol exposure.
As a teratogen, alcohol is capable of directly inducing developmental abnormalities in a fetus. Alcohol use during pregnancy is one of the most common known causes of preventable birth defects, and its results can persist as long-term deficits in physical and cognitive growth and development.
The dangers of fetal alcohol exposure, initially identified in the late 1960's, are entirely preventable if women abstain from drinking during pregnancy. Given this fact, in 1981 the U.S. Surgeon General issued the first health advisory recommending that women who are pregnant or planning a pregnancy should not drink alcohol, and this advisory was repeated in 1990 and 1995.
At the extreme end of the spectrum of prenatal exposure effects, FAS is a clinical diagnosis applied to children who have been exposed to alcohol during gestation and exhibit deficits in growth, physical structure (i.e., morphology), and the central nervous syst...