Pregnant pause. (updates).(consumption of alcohol by pregnant woman could stunt child's development into adulthood)

Even very light consumption of alcohol by a woman during pregnancy--once assumed to be relatively safe--could stunt a child's development even into adulthood, a team at the University of Pittsburgh recently discovered.

Babies of women who indulged during pregnancy have stunted growth and sometimes suffer with lifelong learning and behavioral problems known as fetal alcohol syndrome. Still, it was hoped that the changes of puberty would help these children grow taller and gain weight appropriate to their ages.

Children born to women who were light drinkers in their first trimester--consuming about 1 1/2 drinks a week--were smaller, weighing about 3 pounds less in infancy than children born to non-drinkers. And at age 14, the smaller children born to women who consumed one drink a day weighed up to 16 pounds less than children born to mothers who did not drink.

"I wasn't surprised that we found a growth deficit," says study leader Nancy Day, PhD, a University of Pittsburgh epidemiologist. "What I was surprised by was that we found it after puberty."

The research, which was reported in the October 2002 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, looked only at physical differences up to ...