14 DAY TRIAL // Using funds from the British Medical Association, a team of researchers from the University of Manchester was recently able to demonstrate in a new study that moderate to heavy alcohol intake during the early stages of pregnancy can impair placental growth and functioning.
The placenta is one of the most important organs during pregnancy, since it is responsible for ensuring that the fetus receives all the nutrients it needs to survive. This investigation is one of the most comprehensive ever conducted on the effects of alcohol on placental development.
The research group says that the correlation they have uncovered does not hold for women who consume minimal amounts of alcohol during the earliest stages of pregnancy. The findings are addressed to women who consume moderate or large amounts of alcohol during this critical time.
In their study, researchers defined moderate alcohol intake as consuming 2/3 standard drinks per week, and heavy intake as consuming 4/6 standard drinks. Women who drank so much alcohol during early pregnancy displayed reduced cell growth in their placental samples.
What investigators basically looked at was the effect of acetaldehyde on the female body. This substance is one of the most important toxic breakdown products associated with alcohol consumption.
What was concerning for investigators was discovering that alcohol affects placental development during a critical period in an infant's life, where the three primary germ cell layers in the early fetus start their differentiation into internal organs. Low alcohol intake was found to have no effect on pregnant women.
Another negative effect of drinking was that the placenta was unable to transport the right amount of the critically important amino-acid taurine from the mothers' bodies to their fetuses. Taurine plays a very important role in the development of the human brain.
“Alcohol and acetaldehyde are known to be toxic at high levels, but these results clearly show that levels easily achieved in a normal population have specific effects in the placenta,” says Sylvia Lui, a researcher with the UM Tommy’s Maternal and Fetal Health Research Center.
“Placental growth is reduced in comparison to non-exposed placentas, suggesting that in the long-term, there could be consequences to how much support the infant receives from the placenta during the rest of the pregnancy after this exposure,” adds the scientist, who led the new research.