Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder in Pregnant Women

Highlights:

• Prenatal alcohol exposure can cause developmental issues in children
• Many reproductive-age women struggle with alcohol-use disorder, with few receiving treatment
• Better support is needed for women facing alcohol issues, especially those with legal problems

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is a group of conditions that occur in a person who is exposed to alcohol before birth. It is also known as prenatal alcohol exposure (1^✔).

A pregnant woman went to the crisis center, who was untidy and appeared to be intoxicated. She took her five-year-old daughter along with her to seek help. She was going through a difficult situation with her abusive partner.

‘Did You Know?
No amount of #alcohol is known to be safe to drink during pregnancy. #FASD #pregnantwomen #medindia’

Effect of Alcohol Consumption During Pregnancy

Anna Shchetinina from the crisis center volunteered to help the pregnant woman. The crisis center offered the support she needed. Over time, the woman was able to sober up, leave her abusive partner, and rebuild her life. After coming out from her traumatic condition she started a career in the medical field.

Despite this success story, Shchetinina could not get rid of the thinking about the children affected by such situations. The memory of the young girl with her mother continues to disturb Shcheteinina. Her experience with this family highlights how the challenges of domestic abuse, addiction, and instability can ripple through generations, even when the adults move on from their past.

In April, Anna Shchetinina published a study in the journal PLOS One on the prevalence of alcohol use disorder among pregnant and parenting women. One of the adverse effects is fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), and the severe condition, fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS).

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder and Its Risks

In the worst cases of alcohol exposure, it leads to abortion. When the baby survives after all the risks, the effects are not visible until school age. At this stage, they face challenges in learning, waking up, getting dressed, or making the bed. Over time, prenatal alcohol exposure can damage a child's memory, emotions, attention, self-control, and problem-solving abilities.

Shchetinina explains that diagnosing these issues is difficult because they don't show any symptoms in childhood. When the child reaches school age, diagnoses becomes difficult to find what happened during the pregnancy.

Mothers may struggle to remember their actions from the past six years, and the effects of prenatal alcohol exposure can be similar to abuse or neglect. Anna Shchetinina used data from three major studies-two in the U.S. and one in Europe-to explore these long-term consequences. Her focus is on: What happens to people exposed to alcohol in the womb as they grow into adults?

Alcohol Use Among Reproductive-Age Women

For her April research paper, Shchetinina, with her doctoral adviser, Natalie Slopen, analyzed alcohol use among women of reproductive age in the U.S. They used data from 120,000 women, collected through the National Survey on Drug Use and Health from 2015 to 2021. The study included women aged 18 to 49 and 3% were pregnant. About half were raising children but not pregnant, and the rest were neither pregnant nor parenting.

From the research, they were able to find that about 13% of women who weren't pregnant and didn't have children had alcohol-use disorder, but only 4% of them were receiving treatment. Among pregnant and parenting women, the disorder was about half as common, affecting 6.3% to 6.6%. However, there was a large treatment gap. Only 5% of these women were getting the help they needed.

Bridging the Gap in Treatment for Women with Alcohol Use Disorder

The research highlights the importance of identifying both the need for alcohol-use disorder treatment and the barriers preventing women from accessing it. Slopen emphasized that this is critical for pregnant women and those who might become pregnant.

There is also a need for better interventions for non-pregnant and non-parenting women, who had the highest rates of alcohol-use disorder. One important finding from the research was that women with a history of arrest were more likely to be in treatment, suggesting that legal problems that they faced might be one of the reasons to access healthcare. This indicates a serious gap in the healthcare system.

"Being arrested should not be the easiest path to getting help," she said. Healthcare providers need to be more concerned in offering treatment and society needs to provide more support for women struggling with alcohol use.

Reference:

1. 'Heartbreaking' encounter inspired long view on alcohol - (https:news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/10/shedding-light-on-alcohols-long-shadow/)

Source: Medindia

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