Even Moderate Alcohol During Pregnancy Can Slow Brain Function In Teens

Alcohol during pregnancy is a topic of some contention.

Most commonly, pregnant women are advised to avoid drinking altogether, but recently it has crept back into popular conception that a glass of wine here and there won't do any lasting damage.

Unfortunately, recent research shows this may not be the case at all.

More Severe Cases

Children who are severely affected by alcohol in the womb are easy to spot.

Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) usually develops in the children of women who drink copiously during pregnancy and the symptoms are both physical and psychological - smaller heads, collapsed nasal arches, poor memory span, decreased kidney function and brain function, for example.

Even Moderate Drinking

However, new studies by The Saban Research Institute of the Children's Hopsital Los Angeles, show that even much more moderate drinking can leave lasting damage.

Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is the term used to define children suffering from less severe, but still harmful after-effects of exposure to alcohol in the womb.

Prapti Gautam, PHD, and a team of scientists used MRI brain imaging technology to look at the brain function of two groups of children - one without pregnancy alcohol exposure and one with.

And their discoveries were very interesting.

They perceived weaker brain activation during specific tasks among the children who had been exposed to some level of alcohol in the womb.

Other effects included defecits in intelligence, lack of social awareness, inability to grasp instructions and poor problem sloving and planning.

Not Just Young Children

Even more interestingly, the team found that this sort of brain impairment could last well into the teenage years and further.

During childhood and adolescence, brain function, memory and attention span all improve with a big rate of change, but this rate of change is stunted among children who have been exposed to alcohol in the womb.

There are "significant differences in development," said Elizabeth Sowell PHD, the children affected by FASD "showed a descrease in brain activation during visuo-spatial [exercises]."

How Much Alcohol?

The foetus liver is not fully formed throughout most of a woman's pregancy, meaning that the baby cannot metabolise alcohol effectively, even in small doses.

High blood-alcohol levels means low oxygen and nutrient levels travelling to the brain.

Though FAS can be relatively easily charted, FASD is more subtle, so there are no specific numbers, but educated guesses determine that as many as one child in every 100 could be born with FASD.

According to Drinkaware, there really is no definitive answer as to how much alcohol needs to be present in the bloodstream in order to cause lasting damage.

Basically, don't risk it.

[Weirdest Celebrity Baby Names Ever]

[Couple Married For 62 Years Die On The Same Day]