Alcohol in pregnancy, given the damage to the brain of the unborn child

(ANSA) - ROME, 01 DEC - The damage of maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy has been discovered in the brain of the fetus: with an unprecedented study that used a high-resolution resonance, the research group of Gregor Kasprian, of the University of Vienna highlighted that already from the 20th week of gestation, if the woman consumes alcohol during pregnancy, the brain of the fetus presents structural differences compared to the brain of fetuses of the same gestational age of women who do not consume alcohol during pregnancy.

    The study was presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

    The Austrian experts started from an initial sample of 500 pregnant women between 20 / a and 37 / a week of pregnancy; they subjected the women to an anonymous questionnaire to understand which of them had even dangerous consumption of alcohol during pregnancy. 51 women were found to consume alcohol and fetal resonance was performed on some of them and compared with a similar number of MRIs on fetuses from non-drinking women (control group).

    Well, several structural differences emerged in the brains of the fetuses of women who consumed alcohol in pregnancy. The differences affect various regions of the brain.

    According to experts, alcohol induces an abnormal development of the fetal brain and this would explain why among the symptoms of the so-called fetal alcoholic syndrome there are behavioral disorders, learning disorders, language delays.

   (HANDLE).