'No amount of alcohol consumption is safe during pregnancy'
No amount of alcohol consumption is safe during pregnancy, according to the authors of a new study on foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.Scientists from the University of California, San Diego, warned that drinking alcohol increases the risk of FAS, which manifests itself in the form of preventable birth defects.
They said that the risk is highest for those women who drink during the seventh to 12th weeks of their pregnancies.
Haruna Sawada Feldman, who led the research, studied the pregnancies of nearly 1,000 pregnancies over the course of three decades.
She and her colleagues found each daily drink increased the risk of a baby being born with an abnormally shaped lip by 25 per cent, while there was a 12 per greater cent risk in children being borne with a smaller-than-normal head and low birth weight was 16 per cent more likely.
Study co-author Professor Philip May, of the University of North Carolina, said that the research "clearly illustrates" drinking alcohol and binge drinking is associated with FAS.
"This study also illustrates clearly that there is no threshold that triggers these features of FAS. Instead there is variability from woman to woman in the level of drinking that produces these features," she said.
