Teetotal motherhood?

In February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report and a warning: Sexually active women of childbearing age should abstain from alcohol unless they use contraceptives. The agency said 3.3 million U.S. women are at risk for an alcohol-exposed pregnancy, and it cited a previous surgeon general advisory that there is no safe time to drink during pregnancy or while trying to get pregnant, because we do not know what amount of alcohol is safe during the earliest stages of gestation.

But is the government recommendation an overreaction or a wise precaution?

Medical research shows that alcohol a pregnant woman consumes crosses the placenta and can result in fetal alcohol syndrome, a condition often characterized by childhood developmental delays and low IQ. Michael Charness, a Harvard Medical School neurologist, told the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (NOFAS) that even small amounts of alcohol may affect an unborn baby: “We’ve been able to show very striking effects of alcohol on the ‘L1 cell adhesion molecule,’ a critical molecule for development, at concentrations of alcohol that a woman would have in her blood after just one drink.”

There is little research on the effects of alcohol on an embryo in the beginning stages of gestation. But one study, conducted at the University of Helsinki in 2015, found that the embryos of pregnant mice who drank alcohol suffered genetic damage resulting in symptoms similar to those of fetal alcohol syndrome. The gestational age of the pregnant mice corresponded to 3 or 4 weeks of pregnancy for a human. Embryos are particularly vulnerable to toxins during the earliest stages of gestation because any changes to developing cells can spread extensively to different tissues. Of course, these were mice, not humans, but the experiment shows the importance of early gestation.

Yet, some other research has not found negative effects of low alcohol use during pregnancy. In a study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology in 2008, researchers surveyed 18,553 mothers and found that children of mothers who drank seven or more drinks per week showed behavioral problems and learning difficulties by age 3. But young children whose mothers consumed no more than one or two drinks per week did not show such deficits.

Many experts point out that not every child born to a woman who drinks during pregnancy will suffer harm. The apparent discrepancies in research may be due to factors such as the mother’s genetic makeup, nutrition, or other environmental variables that influence the way alcohol affects a mother and her unborn child.

Kenneth Jones, a pediatric researcher at the University of California, San Diego, told NOFAS, “What may be ‘safe’ for one woman may be ‘devastating’ for another woman’s unborn baby.”

Trick medicine

Scientists trained the brains of patients with Parkinson’s disease to respond to a placebo in the same way they would respond to medication, according to a February study in The Journal of Physiology. The researchers gave apomorphine—a drug used to reduce muscle rigidity—to the Parkinson’s patients and followed it up with a placebo of saline for four days. On the fifth day the scientists administered only the placebo, yet the patients’ brain cells responded as strongly as they had to apomorphine. The effect, though temporary, could enable doctors to reduce medications for patients. —J.B.