Study: Alcohol Consumption May Trigger Autism
By Danell Swim
March 24, 2008
A new study, led by an Indian researcher, has suggested that women who drink alcohol during pregnancy put their babies at risk of developing autism.Raja Mukherjee, a consultant psychiatrist at Surrey Borders Partnership NHS trust, earlier found that drinking while pregnant can give babies a condition called foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS).
He has now come up with his latest finding suggesting that the consumption of alcohol by expecting mothers can also cause autism.
This is the first research to cite that autism may be triggered by the child’s mothers alcohol intake during pregnancy.
Mukherjee said that the findings of this study might elevate concerns about the increasing alcohol consumption among women of childbearing age.
For the past 18 months, Mukherjee was examining children who have been damaged by their mother’s drinking during pregnancy and discovered that a high proportion of them have autism.
“Genetic conditions are by far the most common cause of autism but that is not to say that other things cannot cause it, and prenatal alcohol appears, possibly, to be [a cause]. Unlike genetic conditions, this is 100% preventable, Times Online quoted him, as saying.
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