The biology blog at Biotunes had this one right years ago

According to the editors of JournalWatch,  Light Alcohol Consumption During Early Pregnancy: The News Might Not Be So Bad – Women’s Health. (Free access summary and analysis).  This is not earth-shattering news to Bioblog.

Finally, the idea that a sip of wine during pregnancy won’t completely destroy your fetus seems to be creeping back into the mainstream.  Of course it bears pointing out that Bioblog took this position three years ago.  Back then there were no worthwhile data supporting the intense propaganda that light-to-moderate drinking is harmful.  Not only are there still not, the latest study (Robinson et al., 2010) to look for data to support this notion – and believe me, researchers have been continually grasping at straws for any wisp of a possible connection to behavioral problems, learning disabilities, etc. – not only found no hint of a connection, the numbers actually trended toward the result that the children of light drinkers had fewer behavioral problems from ages 2-14 than those of teetotalers.

But don’t rush out and start swigging a couple beers each week if you would prefer not to drink during pregnancy.  There were many statistical tests used in the paper and no Bonferroni correction was performed, and thus the authors themselves point out that some of the significant results were likely to be spurious. Although it can comfortably be said that alcohol consumption at this level is probably neutral, they and we may assume the “benefit” isn’t real because we just can’t imagine at this time a mechanism through which alcohol would be beneficial.  It doesn’t mean there isn’t one, but it certainly is most likely that the results were due to the multiple comparisons coupled with the large sample size, which increased the power of the statistics used to detect slight, and meaningless, differences.  It’s worth noting though that given self-reported data, the continuing social stigma means that it is probably more likely that women underestimated, rather than overestimated, their alcohol consumption, which means any potential for harm would be overestimated.  At least the women in this study were surveyed during their pregnancy, unlike the previously analyzed laughable study which asked women to remember how much they had had to drink fifteen years before.

This is a good opportunity to reiterate that it’s time to stop accosting visibly pregnant women who are enjoying a glass.  The most likely time for alcohol to adversely affect a fetus is the first trimester anyway (which was covered in the study), so by the time she’s showing, it’s too late for that poor dumb kid anyway.

Reference

Robinson M et al. Low–moderate prenatal alcohol exposure and risk to child behavioural development: A prospective cohort study. BJOG 2010 Aug; 117:1139.

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2 Responses to “The biology blog at Biotunes had this one right years ago”

1. Robin says:

   August 24, 2010 at 3:19 am

   Hooray for Bioblog. I’ve been silently scoffing at the alarmist view of pregnancy and alcohol for years. My theory is that the intellectual elite just see it as their duty to protect the ignorant masses from overdoing it – give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile, so let’s just tell them “zero tolerance.”
2. Tracy says:

   September 3, 2010 at 5:42 am

   I always thought it a bit odd that a single drink could send your fetus spiraling into a toxic amniotic sea full of deformities and learning disabilities; seemed to me that the human body was better adapted to potential toxins than that. I’m not sure it’s the result of the “intellectual elite” trying to protect the masses, but rather: 1) alcohol companies trying to protect themselves from lawsuits; and 2) the fact that this country was founded by various groups of religious extremists. For example, on my first visit to Australia, I discovered pages and pages of ads in the phone book for, shall we say, services that are not legally rendered in most states in the U.S.A. My friend said, “Well, that’s the difference between a country founded by Puritans and a country founded by convicts!”