Alcohol consumption during pregnancy can lead to alcoholism in future generations: Study

Alcohol consumption during the course of pregnancy could be extremely harmful. Alcohol consumption during pregnancy is not only harmful for the mother and the child, but it could also have its ill effects on the coming 2-3 generations.

Drinking alcohol during pregnancy could lead to alcoholism in your children and possibly in their children too. Development of alcoholism in the coming generations could be a curse for any family as alcoholism gives rise to multiple diseases in a person’s body.

What the study says

A study was conducted by The Binghamton University in the US, their spokesperson Nicole Cameron said, “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.”

The study was conducted in the following procedure:

• Pregnant rats were given the equivalent of one glass of wine for 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 result was later posted in the journal Alcoholism. According to the result, when a woman consumes alcohol even in less amounts during her course of pregnancy, she could increase the risk of alcohol addiction in her children as well as her grandchildren.

Extremely surprising right! So, all you to be mothers out there refrain from alcohol completely during pregnancy, as there is nothing more important in this world than your child’s health and well being.

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