Friday, November 16, 2007

Prenatal alcohol exposure and childhood drinking problems

Prenatal alcohol exposure has been associated with childhood problems such as bad behaviour, criminality, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and alcohol problems. A U.S. study of 8,621 children of 4,912 mothers found that there was an association between prenatal alcohol exposure and childhood behaviour problems even when taking all the other environmental factors into account. However, the children of mothers who drank more heavily in one pregnancy than another were found to be at equal risk of ADHD suggesting that for this condition at least environmental and genetic factors were more important than prenatal alcohol exposure.

D'Onofrio, Brian M. ... [et al] - Causal inferences regarding prenatal alcohol exposure and childhood externalizing problems Archives of General Psychiatry November 2007, 64(11), 1296-1304

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