Can drinking alcohol harm the child before the mother knows she is pregnant?
Alcohol drunk by a mouse in early pregnancy changes the way genes function in the brains of the offspring, shows the recent Finnish study. The early exposure was also later apparent in the brain structure of the adult offspring. The timing of the exposure corresponds to the human gestational weeks 3–6 in terms of fetal development.
In addition, the exposure to alcohol was found to cause similar changes to gene function in other tissues of the infant mice. These results suggest that alcohol causes permanent changes to gene regulation in the first cells of developing embryo.
Exposure to alcohol during pregnancy may damage the child in many different ways, including learning disabilities as well as congenital deformities. The mechanisms through which alcohol impacts fetal development are not yet fully understood, and diagnosing the damage caused to the child is difficult.
In the mouse model where the dam drinks alcohol in early pregnancy, the offspring exhibit symptoms similar to fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) in humans: decreased growth rate, similar structural changes to corresponding areas of the face and scull, and hyperactivity. The early exposure begins at conception and continues until the nervous system begins to develop. In humans, this corresponds to the first three or four weeks after conception in terms of development – a period during which the mother-to-be is often unaware of being pregnant.
Article:
http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=152723&CultureCode=en
#research #pregnancy #FAS
'"Alcohol in his blood-surrogate," was Fanny's explanation of every eccentricity'
ReplyDeleteLike always...timing is everything ;)
ReplyDeleteI have FAS. It's been a long struggle. I was put special education classes because my learning disabilities. I never memorized my times tables. I would solve the problem in my head every time using what I have memorized, which was my twos. For example 4x8, would be 2x8 is 16, 16+16= 32. But I wasn't fast enough for the teachers satisfaction so I was put into special ed 2 days a week. The odd thing that happened was they did an IQ test on me when I was in the 6 th grade. I scored really high. So they took me out of sp ed and put me in a class full of gifted students 2 days a week. The class was full and they kicked me out of the gifted class. I was really bummed.
ReplyDeleteKids would pick on me all through school because I had smaller ears and a small mouth. That and I was tiny kid. Even in junior high, guys would stuff me in trash cans and sit on the lid. Or they would lock me in a locker until the janitor would get me out. In HS, a gang of kids tried to kill me. The ended up being arrested.
I decided I was going to teach myself what I wanted to learn. I built model airplanes without any instructions or book. I didn't know how airplane wings created lift so looked at the crows in the backyard and mimicked their wings. I created an airfoil not knowing what it was.
My parents bought me a electronics set from Radio Shack. I did every project on it. Over and over again. In HS, I was so good, they put me in advance electronics class where we learned how to repair stereo to TV for cash.
In Junior High, I learned how to fly a flight simulator. I got really good at it. Then someone introduced me to the Apple II computer. I got really good at it. So good, I was teaching class because I knew more about computers than the teacher assigning to instruct. She would take long coffee breaks during class. She got caught and that was the end of that. In HS, I was so good, about 6 of us were sent to a community college to learn more advanced computer programing. We had started to create wire framed simulations. Little did I know I got really good in mathematics. You have to know math in order to write computer programs. I decided to move on and signed up for algebra. Passed that class in flying colors. Here's the kicker, I was still in Sp Ed, where one of my classes was basic mathematics. They were still trying to teach me how to add, subtract, multiply and divide. It was the 1970's and the education system was run by idiots. I don't think they even knew what FAS was.
Yes, I have FAS (shit happens and you got to deal with it), but thankfully I had the willingness to learn and I think it helped increase my IQ for I had to invent new ways to solve problems that weren't problems for most people. Who knows what I'll do next. Heck, I even think I can combine Special Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, into a Unified Field theory. Seriously, I think I can. Just there's no money in it, so I won't.