The effects of low to moderate prenatal alcohol exposure in early pregnancy on IQ in 5‐year‐old children

Abstract

Objective To examine the effects of low to moderate maternal alcohol consumption during early pregnancy on children's intelligence (IQ) at age 5 years.Design Prospective follow-up study.Setting Neuropsychological testing in four Danish cities 2003-2008. Population A cohort of 1628 women and their children sampled from the Danish National Birth Cohort.Methods Participants were sampled based on maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy. At 5 years of age, children were tested with the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-Revised (WPPSI-R). Parental education, maternal IQ, maternal smoking in pregnancy, the child's age at testing, gender, and tester were considered core confounding factors, whereas the full model also controlled for maternal binge drinking, age, BMI, parity, home environment, postnatal smoking in the home, health status, and indicators for hearing and vision impairments.Main outcome measures The WPPSI-R.Results No differences in test performance were observed between children whose mothers reported consuming between one and four or between five and eight drinks per week at some point during pregnancy, compared with children of mothers who abstained. For women who reported consuming nine or more drinks per week no differences were observed for mean differences; however, the risks of low full-scale IQ (OR 4.6; 95% CI 1.2-18.2) and low verbal IQ (OR 5.9; 95% CI 1.4-24.9) scores, but not low performance IQ score, were increased.Conclusions Maternal consumption of low to moderate quantities of alcohol during pregnancy was not associated with the mean IQ score of preschool children. Despite these findings, acceptable levels of alcohol use during pregnancy have not yet been established, and conservative advice for women continues to be to avoid alcohol use during pregnancy.

Smoking and alcohol drinking during pregnancy as the risk factors for poor child neurodevelopment – A review of epidemiological studies

“…Multivariate analysis showed no statistically significant effects of average weekly alcohol consumption, either individually or in combination on child's intelligence, attention and executive function [36]. These results replicate findings from separate analyses of alcohol consumption on child's intelligence, attention and executive function [31,35]. In summary, more compelling and stronger evidence is needed to evaluate the effect of low-to-moderate levels drinking during pregnancy.…”

“…Additionally the results of the studies on the impact of low to moderate alcohol consumption on IQ are inconclusive. Lower IQ scores were observed in some [33], but not all studies [34,35]. When reviewing the epidemiological studies on the influence of exposure to environmental factors and neurodevelopment in children, it is important to take into account the current limitations of these studies resulting from inadequacies in exposure and outcome assessment, study design and analysis.…”

“…In fully adjusted models, there was no strong statistical evidence that maternal alcohol and tobacco consumption during pregnancy were associated with childhood IQ. Falgreen Eriksen and co-workers (2012) observed that maternal consumption of low to moderate quantities of alcohol during pregnancy was not associated with the mean IQ score of preschool children, compared with children of mothers who abstained [35].…”

“…Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence, Wechsler or Wide Range Achievement Test or subscales of these tests [6,11,13,15,19,[33][34][35][36]. For the evaluation of child behavior the authors used The Child Behavior Checklist [5,29] or Test of Everyday Attention for Children [28,36].…”

FASD: folic acid and formic acid — an unholy alliance in the alcohol abusing mother

“…Light-to-moderate drinking in pregnancy is still controversial. Some studies have found that this level of alcohol consumption may lead to adverse neurodevelopmental effects (D'Onofrio et al 2007;Flak et al 2014), whereas other studies have established no such effects (Falgreen Eriksen et al 2012;Skogerbo et al 2012;Underbjerg et al 2012). Owing to the demonstrated potential for harm to the fetus, most health organizations advocate abstinence from alcohol throughout pregnancy (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2005; Public Health Agency of Canada 2012).…”