Many infants prenatally exposed to high levels of alcohol show one particular anomaly of the corpus callosum.

INTRODUCTION

Effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on the brain are seen at every age. The earlier they can be quantified, the better the prognosis for the affected child. Here we show measurable alcohol effects at birth on a structure currently used for nosology only much later in life.

METHODS

Midline shape of the corpus callosum was imaged in infants via averaged unwarped transfontanelle ultrasound. We compared measures of these shapes among 23 infants prenatally exposed to high levels of alcohol and 21 infants unexposed to alcohol or only lightly exposed.

RESULTS

A particular feature of the corpus callosum, the appearance of a "hook" (obtuse angle) between the splenium and the long diameter of the arch in this plane, is strongly associated with prenatal alcohol exposure. In half of the high-exposed infants, the splenium angle is larger than in any of the unexposed brains. Simply characterizing this angle as less than or greater than 90 degrees detects 12 of the 23 exposed infants as anomalous with only 1 false positive among the unexposed. This apparently direct effect of prenatal ethanol exposure on the details of the callosum in about half the at-risk subjects cannot be attributed to any of several plausible competing exposures or other confounding factors applying during or after gestation.

CONCLUSION

An average of the images for the unexposed subjects has the geometry of textbook images of normal babies; but the average for the subgroup of high-angle subjects may serve as a template or guide to this regional damage parallel to the familiar photographic exemplars that help to assess facial signs.