ArticleAddiction (Abingdon, England)2019
Is the association between maternal alcohol consumption in pregnancy and pre-school child behavioural and emotional problems causal? Multiple approaches for controlling unmeasured confounding.
Article in Addiction (Abingdon, England), 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- Parental characteristics and offspring mental health and related outcomes: a systematic review of genetically informative literature.Translational psychiatry · 2021Pooled it
- Anxiety, Depression, and Emotional Dysregulation Following Prenatal Substance Exposure.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2026Review
- Low to Moderate Prenatal Alcohol Exposure and Neurodevelopmental Outcomes: A Narrative Review and Methodological Considerations.Alcohol research : current reviews · 2023Review
- Prenatal alcohol exposure and child sleep problems: A family-based quasi-experimental study.JCPP advances · 2022Article
- Prenatal smoking, alcohol and caffeine exposure and maternal-reported attention deficit hyperactivity disorder symptoms in childhood: triangulation of evidence using negative control and polygenic risk score analyses.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2022Article
- Emotional and behavioural pathways to adolescent substance use and antisocial behaviour: results from the UK Millennium Cohort Study.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2021Article
- Maternal and offspring genetic risk score analyses of fetal alcohol exposure and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder risk in offspring.Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research · 2021Article
- Association of adverse prenatal exposure burden with child psychopathology in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study.PloS one · 2021Article
- Association of Prenatal Alcohol Exposure and Offspring Depression: A Negative Control Analysis of Maternal and Partner Consumption.Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research · 2020Article
- Maternal Drinking and Child Emotional and Behavior Problems.Pediatrics · 2020Article
- Maternal Genistein Intake Mitigates the Deleterious Effects of High-Fat Diet on Glucose and Lipid Metabolism and Modulates Gut Microbiota in Adult Life of Male Mice.Frontiers in physiology · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
aimsHazardous drinking (i.e. alcohol consumption that places drinkers at risk for adverse health outcomes) during pregnancy is associated with adverse child outcomes. To address whether the associations are causal, we aimed to estimate the effect of maternal hazardous drinking during the first trimester on offspring emotional and behavioural problems throughout the pre-school age. We adjusted for: (1) measured confounding (e.g. smoking), (2) familial risk factors by sibling control design and (3) non-shared environmental risk factors by using hazardous drinking the 3 months before pregnancy as an instrumental variable.
designProspective cohort study. Participants were recruited between 1999 and 2009 at ultrasound examination offered to all pregnant women in Norway. Data were collected during the 17th and the 30th weeks of gestation, and when the children were aged 1.5, 3 and 5 years.
settingNorway, 1999-2015.
participantsThe sample consisted of 14 639 mothers with 25 744 offspring siblings from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study. MEASUREMENTS: Respondents self-reported on: alcohol consumption, children's emotional problems (i.e. emotional reactive, anxiety/depression, somatic complaints) and children's behavioural problems (i.e. attention and aggressive behaviour) throughout pre-school age. We used longitudinal latent growth curve models to estimate the effect of maternal drinking during the first trimester on offspring emotional and behavioural problems.
findingsMost associations were strongly reduced after controlling for both familial and measured environmental risk factors. After adjustment, exposed children were more emotionally reactive [β = 2.33; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.13-4.53] and had more somatic complaints (β = 1.93; 95% CI = 0.09-3.77) at age 3, but not at age 5. Exposed children were less aggressive than unexposed siblings at age 5 (β = -2.27; 95% CI = -4.02 to -0.52).
conclusionsChildren exposed to their mothers' hazardous drinking during the first trimester appear to be more emotionally reactive and have more somatic complaints at age 3, but not at age 5, and are less aggressive at age 5 compared with unexposed siblings.
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