The timing of alcohol consumption during pregnancy and fetal alcohol-induced brain damage
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One of the most challenging goals in fetal alcohol research is to identify the risk factors and mechanisms that influence the outcomes of alcohol exposure during pregnancy since not every woman who drinks alcohol during pregnancy will deliver an offspring with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder or fetal alcohol syndrome. Various key risk factors have been studied that can account for some of the variability in the severity of fetal alcohol-induced damage observed among the affected offspring, and the timing of alcohol exposure during gestation relative to specific developmental events appears to play a significant role affecting the variability in offspring deficits. Although the clinical research on this risk factor is sparse due to the difficulty in partitioning timing, duration and amount of alcohol consumed during pregnancy, considerable pre-clinical research shows a distinct pattern of offspring deficits when the timing of alcohol exposure is wellcontrolled in laboratory settings. This review outlines the effects of timing of alcohol exposure during gestation in various animal model systems and draws parallels between the effects observed in laboratory settings with those from clinical outcomes. 2012 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.
