How alchohol damages brain development in children

Pop-Jordanova, Nada and Demerdzieva, Aneta (2022) How alchohol damages brain development in children. Contributions. Sec. of Med. Sci., 43 (3). ISSN 1857-9345

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Abstract

The world over, people drink in order to socialize, celebrate, and relax, despite the negative health effects
of alcohol. Three periods of dynamic brain changes are evidenced to be particularly sensitive to the harmful
effects of alcohol: gestation (from conception to birth), later adolescence (15-19 years), and older adulthood
(over 65 years). This article is concentrated only on the negative effects of alcohol in children who have
been exposed to alcohol before birth, known as foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS).
This is a review based on published data in PubMed over the last two decades and is an analysis of more
than 150 published papers.
Alcohol use during pregnancy can cause miscarriage, stillbirth, and a range of lifelong physical, be�havioural, and intellectual disabilities. The effects of ethanol are expressed on a set of molecules involved
in neuroinflammation, myelination, neurotransmission, and neuron function.
Modern neuroimaging techniques are able to specify some fine structural changes in the affected areas of
the brain: volume reductions in the frontal lobe, including the middle frontal gyri in the prefrontal cortex,
hippocampal structure, interhemispheric connectivity, abnormalities in glial cells, white matter deficits
etc. Corpus callosum myelination is affected, resulting in a lack of the inter-hemispheric connectivity. This
is known to facilitate autism, stroke, schizophrenia, as well as dementia, disrupts cognitive performance,
and may lead to neurobehavioral deficits.
It was pointed out that many symptoms and neuroimaging characteristics are similar in ADHD and FAS,
thus the anamnesis for prenatal alcohol and nicotine exposure must be taken very seriously in order to
better understand and interpret clinical symptoms.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	Medical and Health Sciences > Clinical medicine
Divisions:	Faculty of Medical Science
Depositing User:	Aneta Demerdzieva
Date Deposited:	15 May 2023 07:57
Last Modified:	15 May 2023 07:57
URI:	https://eprints.ugd.edu.mk/id/eprint/31732

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