A lot of doctors and health experts acknowledge the fact that no amount of alcohol is safe during pregnancy and now scientists have also warned that it’s better to be cautious.
A new study suggests that mothers who consume alcohol during pregnancy put their children at the risk of impairment in kidney blood flow in adulthood and heightenedneurological problems caused by a stroke. In the study conducted on mice, the blood flow analysis showed evidence for increased arterial resistance within the kidneys — a sign of possible early onset renal hypertension in the male offspring that were exposed to alcohol before birth.
“The finding indicates that in mice exposed to alcohol before birth, sex appears to play some role in whether the volume of damaged tissue in the brain correlates with functional and neurological impairment,” said lead researcher Shameena Bake, assistant professor at Texas A & M Health Science Centre in the US.
After assessing the neurological damage caused by stroke, it was found that greater levels of impairment in the six female and six male mice that had fetal alcohol exposure, compared with the dozen that were not exposed to alcohol. Moreover, the measurements of the stroke-damaged area of the brain were linked to scores on neurological testing in the females, but not the males, with fetal alcohol exposure, the researchers maintained.
Researchers administered ethanol to six pregnant mice twice daily for four days, from gestational day 12 through 15, and administered water to six other pregnant mice. Using ultrasound testing, the team measured blood flow in both male and female offspring of the mice at three months of age. The study was presented at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference 2016. The norms around pregnancy seem to be changing every couple of decades but recently more and more studies are hinting at the fact that it’s best to avoid it.
[“source-ndtv”]
