Pregnant women told to ignore drinking advice

Australian researchers are urging pregnant women to ignore a UK study that suggests drinking two units of alcohol a week will not affect child development.

The study of more than 11,000 five-year-olds found children born to light drinkers did not suffer from poor behavioural or intellectual growth.

It also found they scored higher on cognitive tests.

But Dr Lucy Burns from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre says the findings need to be researched further.

"I think the results probably should not be taken into account in a major way," Dr Burns said.

"At the moment we should just ignore these sorts of findings that suggest there might be some sort of benefit on the developing foetus until we have a lot more research in this particular area."

The UK study says women who have one or two alcoholic drinks a week during pregnancy do not harm their children's behavioural or intellectual development.

Researchers found pregnant women who drank up to a glass (175 millilitres) of wine, up to 50 millimetres of spirits or just under a pint of beer a week, did not affect their children.

But children whose mothers were heavy drinkers were more likely to be hyperactive and have behavioural and emotional problems than those whose mothers did not drink during pregnancy.

The results, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, found no evidence to suggest the behavioural or intellectual development of children born to light drinkers was compromised.

Across the entire range of children of non-drinkers and drinkers, the study found boys were more likely than girls to have more developmental problems and also more likely to have behavioural issues, be hyperactive and have problems with peers.

Girls were more likely to have emotional problems.

Source http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/10/06/3031205.htm?section=world