Maternal Alcohol Consumption During Pregnancy and the Risk of Autism Spectrum Disorders in Offspring: A Retrospective Analysis of the Millennium Cohort Study.
C Gallagher, F P McCarthy, R M Ryan and 1 others
PMID 29948531WHAT IT FOUND
Mothers’ reported light, moderate or heavy alcohol use during pregnancy did not show a clear association with autism diagnosis in children at age 11.
Heavy use had only six cases, so it cannot rule out risk.
Key findings
01No statistically significant association was found between maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy and autism spectrum disorders in the overall cohort.
02Among 12,595 children with autism data, 205 (1.6%) had reported autism; 146 were in the no alcohol group, 44 in light, 9 in moderate and 6 in heavy.
03Heavy drinking was reported by 374 cohort members, and the odds ratio for autism compared with no drinking was 1.53, but the association was not statistically significant.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Only 6 children in the heavy drinking group had autism, and only 9 in the moderate group, so the study cannot reliably detect effects at higher drinking levels. Alcohol use was reported by mothers after birth, so recall or social stigma could affect accuracy. Autism was identified by asking parents whether a doctor or health professional had ever told them their child had autism, rather than by a clinical assessment in this analysis. The study did not record when during pregnancy alcohol was consumed, or details such as prior drinking habits or alcohol use disorder. Follow-up data were available for 12,595 of 18,168 singleton pairs with alcohol data.
Declared interests
The paper names the Health Research Board as funder; it does not provide further conflict-of-interest details.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the null result as proof that heavy drinking in pregnancy is safe for autism risk. The heavy group had only 6 autism cases, so the study cannot reliably detect an effect.