Effects of ethanol on pregnant rats and their offspring.

Pregnant rats were intubated with either 1.0 or 2.0 g/kg of ethanol daily throughout gestation. Pair-fed vehicle-treated, and nontreated rats fed ad libitum, served as control groups for ethanol-treated animals. Ethanol treatment reduced food and water consumption and attenuated the gain in body weight of pregnant animals relative to nontreated animals fed ad libitum. Litter size, litter weight, and the mean weight per pup were reduced in both the ethanol-treated and pair-fed control groups. There was no evidence of gross malformations in any of the off-spring. Since the reduction in litter size and litter weights did not differ significantly between ethanol-treated and pair-fed controls, the effects of treatment with ethanol appeared to be related to a reduction in maternal intake of calories rather than to the direct effect of ethanol on the developing fetus. There were no significant differences between any of the groups of offspring on one-way shock avoidance learning, water maze escape learning, spontaneous alternation, or brightness discrimination learning in tests beginning at 75 days of age. Thus, at the doses of alcohol used in this study, there was no evidence of behavioral teratogenesis comparable to that reported for higher doses in animals or in man characterized by the fetal alcohol syndrome.