Fetal alcohol syndrome changes the shape of children’s faces

Alcohol is bad for your health and should be consumed in limited quantities. During pregnancy, it should even be totally prohibited. Because in case of alcoholization of the fetus, the consequences on its health can be serious. Dutch researchers have even found an association between alcoholization of the fetus and malformation of the face of the child at the age of nine.

A study evaluating alcohol consumption before and during pregnancy

For this observational study, the researchers studied pregnant women who had a different relationship with alcohol. Information on maternal alcohol consumption was obtained from questionnaires completed by women in early, middle and late pregnancy. They have been classified into three groups:

• mothers who did not drink before or during pregnancy (the control group);
• mothers who drank in the three months before pregnancy but stopped when they became pregnant;
• and mothers who drank during pregnancy, including those who only drank during the first trimester of pregnancy, and those who continued to drink throughout pregnancy.

A link between alcohol consumption and face shape

Researchers then used a form of artificial intelligence to find a link between alterations in children’s face shape at age nine and the amount of alcohol their mothers drank, both before falling pregnant and during pregnancy.

The discovery is important because the shape of children’s faces can be an indication of health and developmental problems, explains the work’s lead author, Prof. Gennady Roshchupkin, from Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam, the Netherlands. : “I would call the face a “mirror of health” because it reflects a child’s overall health. A child’s exposure to alcohol before birth can have significant adverse effects on their development, and if a mother regularly drinks a large amount, it can lead to Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, FASD , which is reflected on the children’s faces“.

An in-depth analysis of three-dimensional faces

To obtain and analyze three-dimensional images of faces, the researchers therefore selected 3,149 children aged 9 and 2,477 children aged 13, born following these different pregnancies between January 2006 and April 2009.

Professor Roshchupkin explains: “For this task, we developed an AI-based algorithm, which takes high-resolution 3D images of the face and produces 200 unique measurements or “features”. We analyzed them for associations with prenatal alcohol exposure and developed heat maps to display particular facial features associated with maternal alcohol consumption.“.

“The more mothers drink, the more significant the changes”

Results : “We found a statistically significant association between prenatal alcohol exposure and facial shape in nine-year-old children. The more alcohol the mothers drank, the more the changes were statistically significant. The most common features were the tip of the upturned nose, the shortened nose, the turned chin and the upturned lower eyelid” says Xianjing Liu, first author of the study and a doctoral student in the group of Professor Roshchupkin, who developed the AI ​​algorithm.

“Among the group of mothers who drank throughout pregnancy, we found that although the mothers drank very little during pregnancy, less than 12g per week – the equivalent of a small glass of wine of 175 ml or 330 ml of beer – the association between alcohol exposure and the shape of children’s faces could be observed. This is the first time an association has been demonstrated at such low levels of alcohol consumption.” add the authors.

Differences that disappear at 13

The link between alcohol consumption and face shape weakened in older children, and no significant association was found when researchers looked at data from 13-year-old children.

“It is possible that as a child ages and experiences other environmental factors, these changes may lessen or be obscured by normal growth patterns. But this does not mean that the effect of alcohol on health will also disappear. Therefore, it is crucial to emphasize that there is no established safe level of alcohol consumption during pregnancy and it is advisable to stop drinking alcohol even before conception to ensure results. optimal for the health of the mother and the developing fetus” concludes Professor Roshchupkin, who adds that “iFurther investigation into the mechanism of association is needed to fully understand how the association develops and then weakens with age.”