Fetal Alcojhol Syndrome Essays - RTT, Teratogens, Alcohol And Health

Fetal Alcojhol Syndrome Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) refers to a group of physical and mental birth defects resulting from a women's drinking alcohol heavily or at crucial stages during pregnancy. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome was first named and treated in the late 1960's. This condition results from the toxic effect of alcohol and its chemical factors on the developing fetus. FAS is the leading cause of mental retardation occurring in 1 out of every 750 births. The frequency of FAS occurs about 1.9 times out of every 1000 births according to the latest figures, and minor effects can be seen in up to 20% of pregnancies per year. This number changes drastically for women who are clearly alcoholics. As high as 29 children out of every 1000 births will suffer from FAS if the mother is an alcoholic. The overwhelming consistency of this disease is that it is 100% preventable if a mother would drink no alcohol while pregnant. There are three major effects or hallmarks of drinking while pregnant. First, alcohol will cause pre- and postnatal growth retardation for the baby. Second, alcohol can cause central nervous system dysfunction and neurodevelopmental defects for the child. The third consequence of drinking while pregnant causes facial disformaties. Studies comparing children of women who drank continually throughout their pregnancy with women who abstained from drinking that alcohol exposed offspring were smaller in weight, length, and head circumference. The greatest effect of FAS appears to be the overall size of an alcohol-exposed child. Children exposed prenatally to alcohol continue to be smaller than their non-exposed peers. A study has shown that there is a relationship between alcohol exposure during the second and third trimesters and growth at 8 months, 18 months, and 3years of age. Children exposed to an average of one drink per day or more during the second or third trimester were signific antly smaller in weight, length, and head circumference when compared with children who had not been exposed to alcohol. Children that were exposed to less than one drink a day were smaller than the non-exposed children but larger than the more heavily exposed children. The attempt to understand FAS has lead to new areas of research attempting to discover the mechanism that causes defects. As of now the exact mechanism is not known. One theory suggest that alcohol increases placental contractility and thereby decreases oxygen supply to the growing embryo. A lack of necessary oxygen to a growing brain is no doubt the result of alcohol's work but exactly how it happens is still under investigation. In the United States, epidemiological data suggest that the rates of FAS tend to higher in African American and Native Americans than whites of similar socioeconomic status. A survey complied by the centers for disease control and prevention reviewed more than 4.6 million births in approximately 1,200 hospitals and showed considerable differences in occurrence of FAS among racial groups. The reason for variance among these groups remains unclear. Among Native Americans, rates of FAS even varied between the different tribes. This may be attributed to nutrition, fertility, or metabolic differences in the genetic makeup of each tribe. Also Native American family culture can influence drinking patterns often leading to a higher rate of alcohol consumption. Among factors to consider, alcohol consumption is frequently associated with drug abuse, smoking, and malnutrition. All of these factors can cause serious harm to the developing embryo of a child. It is difficult for researchers to decide which effects are caused by alcohol alone. To clearly distinguish a child as having FAS poses a difficult thing for researchers. They soon began to realize that they were encountering children with some, but not all the classical signs of FAS. Because a diagnosis of FAS demands the presence of all three hallmarks, (growth deficiency, central nervous system dysfunction, and physical abnormalities) a term was developed to refer to children with what seemed to suspected fetal alcohol exposure. The name to these occurrences is Fetal Alcohol Effects (FAE). This is not intended to be a diagnosis but rather a bookmark suggesting that the abnormalities seen in children were comparable with FAS. To date, there is no universal accepted evidence that FAE is definable