Up until now it has not been clear how much alcohol during pregnancy leads to an abnormal child and how much is still safe. Therefore doctors prefer to advise completely against alcohol consumption during pregnancy.

Foetal alcohol syndrome

With chronic alcohol abuse during pregnancy, lasting developmental disorders can occur in the child that are grouped together under the heading of foetal alcohol syndrome. Foetal alcohol syndrome is characterised by an abnormally small head, heart problems, slower growth, eye problems. These children are intellectually behind for their entire life.
Oddly enough 95% of foetal alcohol syndrome cases occur in the United States, whereas American pregnant women are not particularly heavy drinkers (1). In the US the syndrome occurs in 1.95 per 1000 live births against 1.3 per 1000 in France, for example. In many other European countries the occurrence of foetal alcohol syndrome is so low that no epidemiological research has been done on it. For Europe the incidence of foetal alcohol syndrome is estimated to be an average of 0.97 cases per 1000 births.

In the United States less alcohol is consumed per capita than in France where the foetal alcohol syndrome is rarer. In addition, drinking behaviour among American women does not differ substantially from pregnant women elsewhere in the world.

Why the foetal alcohol syndrome should be 20 times more frequent in the United States is still an unanswered question. Perhaps American doctors make the diagnosis more readily or perhaps many pregnant women in the US have to contend with alcohol dependency.

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