Women's knowledge and attitudes regarding alcohol consumption in pregnancy: a national survey

Background. Alcohol exposure in pregnancy is a common and modifiable risk factor for poor pregnancy and child outcomes. Alcohol exposure in pregnancy can cause a range of physical and neurodevelopmental problems in the child including the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD). In order to improve prevention strategies, we sought to describe the knowledge and attitudes of women of childbearing age regarding alcohol consumption during pregnancy and its effects on the fetus.Methods. We conducted a national cross-sectional survey via computer assisted telephone interview of 1103 Australian women aged 18 to 45 years. Participants were randomly selected from the Electronic White Pages. Pregnant women were not eligible to participate. Quotas were set for age groups and a minimum of 100 participants per state to ensure a national sample reflecting the population. The questionnaire was based on a Health Canada survey with additional questions constructed by the investigators. Descriptive statistics were calculated and logistic regression analyses were used to assess associations with participants' knowledge and attitudes.Results. Of women surveyed, 61.5% had heard about effects of alcohol on the fetus and 55.3% had heard of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Although 92.7% agreed alcohol can affect the unborn child, 16.2% did not agree that the disabilities could be lifelong. Most women agreed that pregnant women should not drink alcohol (80.2%) and 79.2% reported having negative feelings towards pregnant women drinking alcohol. Women with higher education levels were more likely to know the effects of alcohol consumption in pregnancy (adjusted OR 5.62; 95% CI 3.20 to 9.87) but education level and knowledge were not associated with attitude.Conclusions. There was a disjunction between knowledge and attitudes towards alcohol consumption in pregnancy. These findings will assist in developing effective health promotion campaigns to reduce fetal alcohol exposure and subsequent fetal damage

Attitudes and behaviour predict women's intention to drink alcohol during pregnancy: the challenge for health professionals

Background. To explore women's alcohol consumption in pregnancy, and potential predictors of alcohol consumption in pregnancy including: demographic characteristics; and women's knowledge and attitudes regarding alcohol consumption in pregnancy and its effects on the fetus. Methods. We conducted a national cross-sectional survey via computer assisted telephone interview of 1103 Australian women aged 18 to 45 years. Participants were randomly selected from the Electronic White Pages. Pregnant women were not eligible to participate. Quotas were set for age groups and a minimum of 100 participants per state to ensure a national sample reflecting the population. The questionnaire was based on a Health Canada survey with additional questions constructed by the investigators. Descriptive statistics were calculated and logistic regression analyses were used to assess associations of alcohol consumption in pregnancy with participants' characteristics, knowledge and attitudes.Results. The majority of women (89.4%) had consumed alcohol in the last 12 months. During their last pregnancy (n = 700), 34.1% drank alcohol. When asked what they would do if planning a pregnancy (n = 1103), 31.6% said they would consume alcohol and 4.8% would smoke. Intention to consume alcohol in a future pregnancy was associated with: alcohol use in the last pregnancy (adjusted OR (aOR) 43.9; 95% Confidence Interval (CI) 27.0 to 71.4); neutral or positive attitudes towards alcohol use in pregnancy (aOR 5.1; 95% CI 3.6 to 7.1); intention to smoke in a future pregnancy (aOR 4.7; 95% CI 2.5 to 9.0); and more frequent and higher current alcohol consumption. Conclusions. Women's past pregnancy and current drinking behaviour, and attitudes to alcohol use in pregnancy were the strongest predictors of alcohol consumption in pregnancy. Targeted interventions for women at higher risk of alcohol consumption in pregnancy are needed to change women's risk perception and behaviour

Effet du Filtrage sur l'Evaluation de la Connectivité Fonctionnelle Dynamique et Application sur des Données d'IRMs Fonctionnelles de Rats

International audienceIn the first part, the distributions of correlation coefficients computed from independent signals following additive white Gaussian noises,with or without filtering in specific frequency bands are compared. It is shown that the theoretical distributions of correlations are related to the size of the windows and to the bandwidth of the filtered signals. A statistical test is then proposed to detect significant correlations between signals taking into account multiple testing correction. In the second part, this test is used on brain areas signals extracted from resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging of rats under anesthesia. Functional connectivities are computed on short windows with filtered signals on a given band. This puts in evidence some dynamic properties of networks and enables to propose some metrics related to the cerebral activity. These measures seem to reveal differences of actions between anesthesics.On s’intéresse à la recherche de corrélations significatives entre régions du cerveau sur des signaux obtenus par résonance magnétique nucléaire. Les données sont obtenues par imagerie fonctionnelle de repos (resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging - rs-fMRI) sur des rats anesthésiés [Becq2020functional]. Les corrélations significatives permettent de construire des graphes. En faisant varier la taille des fenêtres d’analyse, on obtient des graphes dynamiques [Calhoun2014]. On est alors confronté à l’apparition de fausses corrélations en raison de la taille des fenêtres qui diminue et de la largeur de bande du filtre, généralement utilisé pour mettre en évidence les phénomènes d’intérêts. Nous étudions ici les effets de ces deux paramètres pour fixer un seuil de détection des corrélations significatives. Nous utilisons ce seuil sur des données expérimentales, ce qui permet de proposer différentes mesures sur les graphes dynamiques. Ces mesures permettent de comparer les effets des différents anesthésiants utilisés dans l’étude sur les individus ou les groupe