Light drinking in pregnancy not harmful to baby: study

Moms-to-be, please note! Light drinking during pregnancy may not harm the baby's behavioural or cognitive development, a new study has claimed.
The study analysed data from the Millennium Cohort Study, a study of infants born in the UK between 2000-2002, to assess whether light drinking (up to two units of alcohol per week) in pregnancy was linked to unfavourable developmental outcomes in 7-year-old children.
Researchers, from University College London, used information on 10,534 seven-year-olds from home-visit interviews and questionnaires completed by parents and teachers to identify social and emotional behaviour (such as hyperactivity, attention or conduct problems).
The children were also tested for cognitive performance in maths, reading and spatial skills.

Groups who made up the sample were mothers who never drank (12.7 per cent), those who did not drink in pregnancy but otherwise did drink (57.1 per cent), those who were light drinkers (23.1 per cent) and those who drank more during pregnancy (7.2 per cent).
Children born to light drinkers were shown to have more favourable (lower) behavioural difficulties scores compared with those born to mothers who didn't drink during pregnancy.

However, the difference was not enough to be significant, except in the case of boys born to light drinkers who had slightly fewer reported behavioural problems.
Furthermore, children born to light drinkers were also found to have more favourable (higher) cognitive test scores compared to children born to non-drinkers, but these differences mostly lost statistical significance, except for reading and spatial skills in boys.

The study concluded that while children born to light drinkers appeared to have more favourable developmental profiles compared to those born to mothers who did not drink during pregnancy, after statistical adjustment these differences largely disappeared.
"There appears to be no increased risk of negative impacts of light drinking in pregnancy on behavioural or cognitive development in seven-year-old children," said Professor Yvonne Kelly, co-author of the study.
"While we have followed these children for the first seven years of their lives, further research is needed to detect whether any adverse effects of low levels of alcohol consumption in pregnancy emerge later in childhood," Kelly said.

The study was published in journal BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.