Alcohol is always injurious to health and alcohol consumption in pregnant women is more dangerous as it leads the baby into several severe diseases. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or FAS is one among them.

What is FAS?

It is a set of different disorders that affects the child arising from alcohol ingestion by the mother during pregnancy. It causes poor mental and physical growth and behavioral defects in the child. FAS was reported by P.Lemoine in France for the first time. Nearly 2 out of 1000 children in the United States are FAS-affected by birth and another 40 thousand are born with other fetal alcohol effects (FAE).

How does FAS affect the baby?

When a pregnant woman intakes alcohol, it easily breaks the placental barrier and attacks the fetus. Drinking alcohol in the first three months of pregnancy has the worst consequences because the brain of the baby is under development in this phase. Alcohol consumption in the second and third trimesters also can hurt the nervous system badly because some complicated developmental processes are going on in these phases.

Symptoms of FAS

There are physical and mental symptoms for FAS. Physical symptoms include poor growth before and after birth and low birth weight .There would be structural problems such as small or microcephalic head, short palpebral fissures (eye openings), small nose, flattened cheek bones, smooth and long philtrum and thin upper lip. Heart defects will be there such as Atrial Septal Defect (ASD) and Ventricular Septal defect (VSD).

Mental and behavioral symptoms include poor socialization and coordination skills, poor fine motor skills, poor memory, poor language comprehension, difficulty in grasping concepts like time and money, lack of imagination, lack of concentration, lack of curiosity and social withdrawal.

As the child grows, these problems also may increase and lead to mental health problems and physical abnormalities.

Treatment

No medication or treatment is available for this syndrome. However, efforts can be made to overcome the risky condition by providing special school facilities for behavioral development. According to the needs, devices such as eyeglasses and hearing aids can be provided to overcome the physical deficiencies.

Prevention

Prevention is always better than cure and in the case of FAS, it is the only way. Avoiding alcohol consumption completely is the first and last solution to prevent this disease. Even occasional or binge drinking can result in other fetal alcohol effects (FAE), alcohol-related neurodevelopmental disorder (ARND) and numerous other alcohol-related diseases.

That is why both the Surgeon General of the United States and Department of Health in the United Kingdom warn against alcohol consumption during pregnancy, even at the lowest level.