Sipping a Cup of Wine While Pregnant Triggers Alcoholism in Next Three Generations

Alcohol consumption during pregnancy has an alcohol-related behavior for longer, impacting not only the fetus directly exposed but also future generations.

Just consuming a glass of wine during pregnancy can trigger your great grandchildren to be addicted to alcohol, according to a new study.

"Our findings show that in rats, when a mother consumes the equivalent of one glass of wine four times during the pregnancy, her offspring and grand-offspring up to the third generation show increased alcohol preference and less sensitivity to alcohol," said Nicole Cameron from Binghamton University in the US.

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Infants of mothers who drink alcohol during pregnancy can suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome, mental retardation, developmental abnormalities and low birth weight.

For the study, pregnant rats were given the equivalent of one glass of wine four days in a row at gestational days 17-20, the equivalent of the second trimester in humans.

Juvenile male and female offspring were then tested for water or alcohol consumption and adolescent males were tested for sensitivity to alcohol by injecting them with a high-alcohol dose, which made them unresponsive and measuring the time it took them to recover their senses.

The results, published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, suggest that if a mother drinks during pregnancy, even just a little bit, she increases the risk that her progeny will become alcoholic.

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Alcohol consumption during pregnancy increased arterial resistance within the kidneys, a sign of possible early onset renal hypertension in the male offspring.

The team claims to be the first to investigate the effects of alcohol consumption during pregnancy and alcohol-related behavior on generations that were not directly exposed to alcohol in the uterus during the pregnancy.

Source-IANS

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