Decades ago they started exposing themselves the dangers to the fetus of alcohol consumption during pregnancy, although it was known as the "fetal alcohol syndrome" later.
It is considered that the daily intake of 90 mL of ethanol in pregnancy causes 40% of fetuses to suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome, if they are 60-90 mL it will happen in 19, and if they are 30-60 mL, in 10 of cases. Now we know a lot about this syndrome, but who was the first to study it? Who gave it that name?
Paul Lemoine, social pediatrician of Nantes, was the first to describe the picture of the children of an alcoholic mother, observing the peculiar aspect and mental retardation that some children in his city, whose mothers were alcoholics, presented. Remember that alcohol consumption during pregnancy is one of the most frequent causes of mental retardation.
Lemoine described that these children had a small head with small palpebral grooves, small jaw and lip in the mouth of fish. Also, heart murmur and a macrodactyly on the first toe. They evolved with somatic, psychomotor and psycho-affective growth retardation.
The direct cause is the consumption of ethanol that directly affects the fetus. Alcohol affects your respiratory chain, your metabolism and even your chromosomes, producing abnormalities.
The term "fetal alcoholic syndrome"
Lemoine, together with Harousseau and Borteyru, published his observations of 127 children affected by this disease in the journal "Ouest Medical" (1968), which had little impact. We had to wait a few decades for the Americans Clarren and Jones, in the prestigious magazine "Lancet" (1985), to describe 11 cases of alcoholic fetopathy, which had a great impact on the scientific world.
They called it "Fetal Alcohol Syndrome" (SAF), and described three levels of severity:
- On the first level there are deficiencies of pre and postnatal growth;
- in the second there are facial cranial alterations, such as microcephaly and very poorly developed filtrum, short palpebral fissures and malformations of the maxillary area;
- in the third level they describe serious dysfunctions of the central nervous system.
Nowadays much progress has been made in the knowledge of fetal alcohol syndrome and all its consequences. A problem that is not new and, as we see, already had the first studies decades ago, helping to understand the influence of the mother's health habits on the fetus and to prevent many times.
