The effect of different alcohol drinking patterns in early to mid pregnancy on the child's intelligence, attention, and executive function

OBJECTIVE: To conduct a combined analysis of the estimated effects of maternal average weekly alcohol consumption and any binge drinking in early to mid-pregnancy on general intelligence, attention, and executive functions in five-year old children. DESIGN: Follow-up study. SETTING AND POPULATION: 1,628 women and their children sampled from the Danish National Birth Cohort. METHODS: Participants were sampled based on maternal alcohol consumption during early pregnancy. At age five, the children were tested for general intelligence, attention and executive function. The three outcomes were analyzed together in a multivariate model to obtain joint estimates and p-values for the association of alcohol across outcomes. The effects of low-moderate alcohol consumption and binge drinking in early pregnancy were adjusted for a wide range of potential confounders. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-Revised (WPPSI-R), the Test of Everyday Attention for Children at Five (TEACh-5), the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functions (BRIEF). RESULTS: Multivariate analyses showed no statistically significant effects of average weekly alcohol consumption or any binge drinking, individually or in combination. These results replicate findings from separate analyses of each outcome variable. CONCLUSION: The present study contributes comprehensive methodological and statistical approaches that should be incorporated in future studies of low-moderate alcohol consumption and binge drinking during pregnancy. Further, since no safe level of drinking during pregnancy has been established, the most conservative advice for women is not to drink alcohol during pregnancy. However, the present study suggests that small amounts consumed occasionally may not present serious concern

Preventing alcohol-exposed pregnancies: a randomized controlled trial

Prenatal alcohol exposure is a leading preventable cause of birth defects and developmental disabilities in the United States

On a theorem due to Crouzeix and Ferland

Nonsmooth analysis, Nonsmooth optimization, Generalized convexity, KT pseudoconvex problems, FJ pseudoconvex problems, Quasiconvex programming, 90C26, 26B25, 49J52,