Alcohol Consumption Among First Time Mothers And Its Effects On Preterm Birth

State the results of the research

The results of the study by Dale, Bakketeig, and Per Magnus (2016) regarding alcohol consumption among first-time mothers and its effects on preterm birth do not indicate a clear risk reduction for drinking during pregnancy. The surveys issued at gestational week 15 received a 94.9% response rate, with a sample size of 101,769 for the questionnaire and 108,327 from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway (MBRM). Collected data was narrowed to a total of 46,252 participants who met the criteria of primiparous women with singleton pregnancies who delivered between week 22 and 43 of gestation. In this study, the incidence of preterm birth was 5.9%, or 2,729 out of 46,252 births, with a median length of gestation of 40 weeks and mean of 39.47 weeks for both drinkers and nondrinkers during pregnancy (SD = 2.03). For prepregnacy drinkers, the mean pregnancy length was 39.48 weeks (SD = 2.02) (Dale et al., 2016).

The data included 93 births before gestational week 22 which were included in a sensitivity analysis. In order to explore the potential impact of mothers who were nonresponsive regarding alcohol intake in pregnancy (n = 381), researchers compared data to the main analysis and found that the estimates regarding the impact of alcohol use on very early preterm birth were similar to previous results obtained regarding drinking prior to and during pregnancy. Thus, alcohol consumption in this study could not be linked to preterm birth (Dale et al., 2016).

Describe the differences in the results between the groups in the study and support your description with examples from the study

Dale et al. (2016) reported that there were several typical differences between women in the drinkers and nondrinkers ca...

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... excluded potential risk factors for preterm birth including previous pregnancies and multiple births. Thus, these results should only be applied to the risk of alcohol consumption for primiparous mothers with singleton pregnancies. However, despite the lack of risks identified in this study, alcohol use during pregnancy has been linked to disabilities. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP, 2011), its adverse effects include fetal alcohol syndrome, learning disabilities, social ineptness, depression, and anxiety. The AACAP strongly recommends against pregnant women consuming any form of alcohol at any level. Despite the data presented by Dale et al. (2016), the question of the other risks of alcohol consumption on the fetus was not explored and thus alcohol use during pregnancy should not be condoned solely based on this study.