Drinking During Pregnancy Not Exceeding Moderate Levels Is Okay, Researchers Say

Drinking During Pregnancy

Moderate drinking during pregnancy appears to have no negative effect on children, a new study has found.

A group of researchers from Denmark conducted a series of studies which analyzed data from more than 1,600 women in the Danish National Birth Cohort. They classified the amount of alcohol consumed by the women during their pregnancy either none, low, moderate, or high. In addition, binge drinking was defined as having 5 or more drinks on a single occasion.

When the child reached the age of 5, the children underwent various development tests. Researchers found no significant association between prenatal alcohol consumption at low and moderate levels and general intelligence, attention, executive function or IQ.

"We are not encouraging women to drink but we hope to reassure those who have been drinking in the early stages of pregnancy - maybe before they knew they were having a baby - that they don't need to worry about it," said Aarhus University professor Ulrik Schioler Kesmodel.

He added that he and fellow researchers were "really surprised" not to find any evidence of harmful effects in children among pregnant women who had been involved in binge drinking.

However, experts at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine disagree
with the Danish researchers.

In a statement released on Friday, Kenneth Lyons Jones, MD, professor in the UCSD Department of Pediatrics and a renowned expert in birth defects, and Christina Chambers, MPH, PhD, director of the California Teratogen Information Service (CTIS) Pregnancy Health Information Line said the studies are misleading to pregnant women, citing more than 30 years of research to the contrary. 

"This series of studies collected data on alcohol exposure during an interview conducted sometime between 7 and 39 weeks of pregnancy. The quantity and frequency of alcohol consumed was based on mother's recall which may not be accurate," Jones said.

Chambers, meanwhile, pointed out the overwhelming evidence of more than 30 years of research supporting the conclusion that alcohol, especially alcohol consumed in a binge pattern, can be harmful to the developing baby.

"Individual women metabolize alcohol differently, and vary in terms of how susceptible they may be to having an affected child," Chambers said. "Although we do not want to alarm women who find out they are pregnant and realize that they have consumed low levels of alcohol before they knew they were pregnant, we emphasize that a 'safe' amount of alcohol that any individual woman can drink while pregnant is impossible to establish. The best advice continues to be that women should avoid alcohol entirely during the nine months that she is carrying the baby."

Photo courtesy of CDC.gov