Social Policy Department, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom.
Sociology and Criminology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16803, USA.
Addict Behav. 2019 Nov;98:106003. doi: 10.1016/j.addbeh.2019.05.027. Epub 2019 May 25.
Maternal heavy alcohol use during pregnancy is harmful to offspring's health and adjustment. However, findings from studies on lower levels of prenatal drinking are mixed; a few even predict positive cognitive and psychosocial outcomes. Given that alcohol is a neurotoxin and teratogen, scholars question developmental benefits and point to residual confounding as a potential explanation, particularly as light drinkers are positively selected with respect to health and socioeconomic status. Using prospective, intergenerational data from the nationally-representative Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) in the United Kingdom, we studied associations between mother's drinking during pregnancy and children's cognitive and psychosocial outcomes at ages 3, 5, 7, 11, and 14 years (n = 10,454). We included early life confounders (e.g., maternal education, health, smoking) and mother's cognitive ability, and assessed robustness of relationships across outcomes and alternate drinking classifications. Results of a series of multivariable regression models found no association between light drinking and cognitive and psychosocial outcomes up to and including the age of 14, after controlling for key confounders. Light drinking during pregnancy was linked to higher socioeconomic advantages (e.g., mothers' higher education, professional/managerial occupation, home ownership, cognitive scores), which together accounted for positive associations between light drinking and children's outcomes. Mother's cognitive ability was an especially important confounder.
母亲在怀孕期间大量饮酒会对后代的健康和适应能力造成危害。然而，关于低水平产前饮酒的研究结果存在差异；一些研究甚至预测出积极的认知和社会心理结果。鉴于酒精是一种神经毒素和致畸物，学者们对其发展益处提出了质疑，并指出残留的混杂因素是一个潜在的解释，尤其是轻度饮酒者在健康和社会经济地位方面是被积极选择的。我们使用英国具有全国代表性的千禧年队列研究（MCS）的前瞻性世代间数据，研究了母亲在怀孕期间饮酒与儿童在 3 岁、5 岁、7 岁、11 岁和 14 岁时的认知和社会心理结果之间的关联（n=10454）。我们纳入了早期生活混杂因素（例如，母亲的教育、健康、吸烟）和母亲的认知能力，并评估了在不同结果和替代饮酒分类下关系的稳健性。一系列多变量回归模型的结果表明，在控制了关键混杂因素后，轻度饮酒与认知和社会心理结果之间没有关联，直至 14 岁。怀孕期间轻度饮酒与更高的社会经济优势有关（例如，母亲更高的教育程度、专业/管理职业、拥有住房、认知评分），这些因素共同解释了轻度饮酒与儿童结果之间的积极关联。母亲的认知能力是一个特别重要的混杂因素。
