More than half of women in France continue to
drink alcohol during their pregnancies, according to a new French study.
However, the researchers also found that most of these women are uninformed
about the risks to their babies’ health.
“Our results surprised us because we didn’t think that the women were so
massively going to answer that they were so ignorant of the dangers of alcohol
during pregnancy,” said Ingrid de Chazeron of the Centre Hospitalier
Universitaire, who led the study.
The study, published in the May issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental
Research, compiled data from 837 pregnant women at public and private obstetric
centers who participated in the study between July 2003 and June 2004.
The women responded to a survey that asked about their drinking patterns during
pregnancy, and 52.2 percent said they had used alcohol — having at least one
drink —during the time. The researchers noted this was a “huge difference” from
the United States, where only 12 percent of pregnant women report any alcohol
use. Moreover, 13.7 percent of the participants said they had at least one
binge-drinking episode where they had five or more drinks on one occasion.
de Chazeron and her colleagues said that drinking wine and beer is part of the
“regular eating habits” in France and there is a lot of controversy over the
safety of occasional drinking during pregnancy.
“At the time of our study, I don’t think that women had been aware of the risks
to their baby’s health about drinking,” de Chazeron said. “First, there was not
enough campaigning about the dangers of alcohol during pregnancy … and [women]
do not believe that small consumptions, even regularly, can influence the future
of their child.”
Past evidence has proven that drinking alcohol during pregnancy can lead to
fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), one of the main causes of mental retardation and
birth defects. In the new study, two women gave birth to babies with FAS.
The question of how much alcohol is safe to consume during pregnancy is not as
controversial in the United States, where the advice from ob/gyns is mostly
consistent.
“The common advice given by ob/gyns is that abstinence is the safest way to
eliminate the possibility of your child having FAS,” said Chemen Tate, M.D.,
chief resident of obstetrics and gynecology at Indiana University School of
Medicine. “When pressed [by patients], with ‘c’mon, one drink won’t hurt,’ most
ob/gyns would admit that one drink in nine months would not likely result in
full-blown FAS, but we do not know the amount of alcohol it takes to cause any
one of the fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. The potential outcome is definitely
not worth the gamble.”
