Although it’s clear that drinking alcohol during pregnancy can result in negative outcomes such as birth defects and brain damage, fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is still extremely difficult to understand, treat, and prevent. Four first-year medical students from Georgetown University Medical Center examined the clinical treatment of FAS, finding that no new medical strategies exist to detect or prevent the debilitating syndrome that can result after prenatal exposure to alcohol.
Their study, published in Developmental Neuroscience, discovered a lack of sensitive and specific tools for diagnosing children with FAS. Although drinking during pregnancy is highly prevalent and there is a great deal of ongoing research, there isn’t much that translates to a clinical setting.
Sahar Ismail, now in her second year of medical school, worked with fellow students Stephanie Buckley, Ross Budacki, and Ahmad Jabbar on the study, which was a project for the Sexual Development and Reproduction Module under directorship of G. Ian Gallicano, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular & Cellular Biology.
Dr. Gallicano said that this study is important because even though the students combed through all available research on fetal alcohol syndrome, they found that nothing has changed clinically. While not every woman who drinks alcohol during pregnancy will have a child with FAS, so much is still unknown that all women are advised against drinking while pregnant.
Ismail said that it still isn’t known whether alcohol is a teratogen (a chemical that causes nervous system abnormalities) in the first days or weeks of pregnancy, when a woman may not know she is pregnant. While animal studies show that alcohol can have detrimental effects at any stage of fetal development, only a certain amount can be concluded about humans from animal studies.
The researchers can say with certainty that alcohol is the leading cause of preventable mental retardation. Although FAS only affects .2 to 1.5 live births in every 1,000, fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD)—a less severe form of FAS—is much more common.
The authors say that while there currently is no treatment or specific diagnostic tools to diagnose FAS early in pregnancy or after birth, there is ongoing research aimed at creating better diagnostic tools, including a panel of genes that are altered in the developing fetus and a kit to examine a newborn’s stool, which can identify certain chemicals that are present in FAS. Researchers are also seeking a way to find biomarkers that can inform physicians if a pregnant woman is drinking alcohol. One marker can be detected in the bloodstream for at least 28 days after alcohol use.
Despite this, the researchers say there has been little investigation into these concepts.
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