An exciting new study would be the first to detect achange in the shape of the face of children whose mothers drank alcohol before and during pregnancy. The change in the shape of the face was also observed in cases where the amount of alcohol consumed amounted to less than a small glass of wine or a bottle of beer.
The study indicates that the face shape of a child is a possible indicator of developmental healthsomething that was already known in the case of the disorder of the fetal alcohol spectrum in which drinking heavily and assiduously during pregnancy left signs after birth.
As he explained Gennady Roshchupkinlead author of the study and assistant professor and team leader in population computational biology at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands: “I would call the face a health mirror as it reflects a child’s overall health. A baby’s exposure to alcohol before birth can have significant adverse effects on its developing health and, if a mother drinks a large amount on a regular basis, this can cause fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, FASD, which is reflected in the babies’ faces.”
For further insight, the researchers used artificial intelligence on a new document (AI) and deep learning technology to find patterns among the facial shapes of children and the alcohol their mothers drank, both during pregnancy and a few months before conception. They used 3D scans of thousands of participants aged 9 to 13 from the longitudinal study Generation R in the Netherlands.
The first author Xianjing Liua doctoral student in Professor Roshchupkin’s group, explained this: “We found a statistically significant association between prenatal alcohol exposure and face shape in nine-year-old children. The more alcohol the mothers drank, the more statistically significant changes there were. The most common traits were an upturned tip of the nose, a shortened nose, an outturned chin, and a rolled lower eyelid.
The study was later published in the journal Human Reproduction.