Eye blinks may spot kids with fetal alcohol syndrome

By Anthony J. Brown, MD

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Children exposed to alcohol in the womb have impaired eye blinks compared with their unexposed peers, researchers found in a study they conducted.

Children exposed to alcohol before birth may develop fetal alcohol syndrome -- a collection of birth defects and developmental problems that can include delayed

growth, significant learning disabilities and abnormal facial features. However, not all children with fetal alcohol syndrome are born with the distinctive facial anomalies of the condition.

Writing in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, researchers say their findings indicate that deficits in so-called eye blink conditioning, or EBC, can identify children with probable fetal alcohol syndrome.

"Animal studies have shown that binge consumption of alcohol during pregnancy impairs EBC," study investigator Dr. Sandra W. Jacobson, of Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, explained in a written statement. "We wanted to see if we could use the EBC paradigm to identify underlying or subcortical (brain) deficits that are specifically affected by prenatal alcohol exposure in children," she said.

The study involved 98 five-year-old children in Cape Town, South Africa who had eye blink testing. This area was selected because of its known high incidence of fetal alcohol syndrome.

Overall, 64 of the children were born to heavy drinking mothers, including 12 who met criteria for fetal alcohol syndrome and 18 who met criteria for partial fetal alcohol syndrome.

None of the children with fetal alcohol syndrome achieved normal EBC compared with 75 percent of control children, the team found. Moreover, among children with less severe alcohol-related exposures, it usually took more test sessions to achieve normal EBC than it did for controls.