Erhard Bieberich, a biochemist in the Medical College of Georgia Schools of Medicine and Graduate Studies compared cell death in mice following different levels of alcohol consumption.
The researchers studied how alcohol consumption affects neural crest cells, which help form the upper part of the skull, in mice. The results found that there is evidence that the equivalent of just a few glasses of wine over an hour in the first few weeks of fetal life can increase cell death that occurs during normal development.
Previous research has shown that women who consumed an average of five or more drinks per sitting were more than twice as likely than non-drinkers to have an infant with either of the two major infant oral clefts.
Women who drank at this level on three or more occasions during the first trimester were three times as likely to have infants born with oral clefts.
Fetal alcohol syndrome affects every one in 1,000 babies.
Other symptoms include facial malformations such as a flat and high upper lip, small eye openings, and a short nose.
