Identification of Children With Prenatal Alcohol Exposure

The term “fetal alcohol spectrum disorders” (FASD) denotes the broad spectrum of morphological changes and functional deficits seen in children exposed to alcohol prenatally. While some children on the spectrum show the characteristic pattern of malformations called “fetal alcohol syndrome” (FAS), a...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Current developmental disorders reports 2014-09, Vol.1 (3), p.141-148
Main Authors: Coriale, G., Fiorentino, D., Kodituwakku, P. W., Tarani, L., Parlapiano, G., Scalese, B., Ceccanti, M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alcohol use
Biomarkers
Births
Clinics
Disease control
Family Medicine
Fetal alcohol syndrome
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (P Kodituwakku
General Practice
Longitudinal studies
Medical imaging
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Methods
Microcephaly
Morphology
Nervous system
Neuroimaging
Pediatrics
Pregnancy
Psychiatry
Section Editor
Surveillance
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The term “fetal alcohol spectrum disorders” (FASD) denotes the broad spectrum of morphological changes and functional deficits seen in children exposed to alcohol prenatally. While some children on the spectrum show the characteristic pattern of malformations called “fetal alcohol syndrome” (FAS), a significant proportion of alcohol-exposed children do not evidence clinically identifiable morphological alterations. The term “alcohol-related neurodevelopmental disorder” (ARND) is used to label the latter group. The identification of children with ARND has proven to be challenging because of the lack of clinically discernable physical signs. Therefore, some investigators have used the strategy of assessing maternal drinking during pregnancy and then tracking developmental outcomes in offspring longitudinally. Other methods that investigators have utilized to identify children with prenatal alcohol exposure in population-based studies include multi-source surveillance and active case ascertainment. In the current review, we discuss the merits and demerits of these methodologies and then present novel methods of identifying prenatal alcohol exposure (e.g., biomarkers) and subtle effects of morphological alterations and neural effects (e.g., neuroimaging).
ISSN:2196-2987
2196-2987
DOI:10.1007/s40474-014-0018-2