NEW YORK, Mar 30 (Reuters Health) -- Women who binge drink during the first trimester of pregnancy are at higher risk for having a baby with a cleft palate or lip, or both, according to a report in the Journal of Pediatrics.
Pregnant women who consumed five or more alcoholic drinks per occasion, one or more times per week, had a 3.4 to 4.6 times greater risk of bearing a child with these facial deformities compared with women who did not drink or drank less, according to the study.
Dr. Gary Shaw and Dr. Edward Lammer of the California Birth Defects Monitoring Program in Emeryville, California interviewed mothers of 731 babies born with cleft lips or palates and also a "control" group of mothers of 734 babies with no such deformities.
The mothers were asked to recall how much alcohol they consumed over a 4-month period beginning 1 month before conception to 3 months after. "This period encompasses the most relevant timing of lip and palate (development), which is usually complete by 60 days' gestation," the researchers write. "Although we do not think that alcohol consumption in the month before conception is potentially (dangerous), it was included to provide a sufficient time overlap with conception, the exact time of which may not have been known by some women in the study."
Shaw and Lammer also found that women who consumed less than five drinks on one occasion once a week had no greater risk than women who drank no alcohol at all.
"Adjustment for maternal cigarette smoking, race, education, or vitamin use did not substantially change observed risk," they add.
SOURCE: Journal of Pediatrics 1999;134:298-303.
