
Pregnant women may be receiving conflicting advice about how much alcohol is safe. It is common sense that heavy and binge drinking is a big no no and official Australian guidelines from the National Health and Medical Research Council state that avoiding all alcohol in pregnancy is the safest option. But often women are told by their well-meaning and often persuasive friends and family that the odd glass or two is fine.
A study led by researchers from Bristol and Oxford universities and involving over 6,000 mothers and their children assessed whether genetic variation in alcohol metabolizing genes in mothers and their children were related to the children’s IQs at age 8.
What is “moderate” drinking? The researchers defined it as between 1-6 units (with one drink specified as one unit) of alcohol per week. What they found was that women who drank at this level during pregnancy and whose children also had specific genetic variants in alcohol-metabolising genes had children with a lower IQ when tested at 8 years of age.
It seems that in children with slow metabolising genes, peak alcohol levels may be higher and persist for longer than in fast metabolisers.
So how do you know if you’re a slow metaboliser or a fast one? You don’t...but the message is clear: even moderate amounts of alcohol during pregnancy can have a detrimental effect on your baby’s brain development and intelligence, and not drinking alcohol during pregnancy is the safest option.
References available on request