A new study, Published in the journal Human Reproduction last Thursday (16/2), showed that alcohol intake during pregnancy, even in small amounts, can cause permanent changes in the baby’s facial features.
Dutch researchers studied the faces of 5,600 school-aged children using 3D images. They found differences between the features of the children of mothers who drank alcohol during pregnancy and those who did not.
Most mothers who drank during pregnancy also drank alcohol in the three months prior to pregnancy. The intake was small, 12 grams per week, the equivalent of a glass of wine.
The fetus exposed to alcohol had, as a child, a shorter and slightly upturned nose, in addition to a slight regression of the eyelids below the eyes. These changes were directly proportional, that is, the more alcohol the pregnant woman consumed, the more noticeable the facial changes.
This effect, however, seemed to diminish with age, as the 13-year-olds had less pronounced features than the 9-year-olds.
The researchers point out that, according to previous studies, excessive alcohol consumption during pregnancy is responsible for fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which causes changes in the baby’s cognitive abilities and behavior.
The study by Dutch scientists is the first to observe such low levels of alcohol consumption. According to them, the finding “suggests that women who are pregnant or wish to become pregnant soon should discontinue alcohol consumption several months before conception and completely during pregnancy to avoid adverse health outcomes for children,” they comment.
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