For Zebulon resident Becky Brantley, fetal alcohol spectrum disorders affects pretty much everything her son does on a day-to-day basis.
Brantley, who adopted a child with full fetal alcohol syndrome, said her son has struggled to come to terms with the depths of his disease.
“Since there is no cure for FASD and there are not a lot of present treatment for diagnosis, the biggest thing that we can do is provide accommodations and modify his environment so that the environment and his abilities are matched,” Brantley said. “He is not over it. And I don’t know that he ever will be over it, because grief comes in ways, and since there is no cure for FASD, the things that were hard are always hard and they will always be hard.”
Close to five percent of children in the United States may be affected by fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, according to a newly-released UNC study published in the journal, "Pediatrics," — a number much higher than the previous estimate of one percent.
Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders are a group of conditions that can occur in a person whose mother consumed alcohol during pregnancy, resulting in physical, behavioral and learning problems in the newborn due to brain damage.
Previous researchers underestimated the rate because they studied clinical referrals rather than actively searching the general population for cases of the disorder, said Philip May, research professor at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.
"We are picking up individuals with full spectrum,” May, who led the study, said. “The majority of them will otherwise never be recognized as having fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.”
The research studied the incidence of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders by looking at the samples among first graders enrolled in public and private schools in Sioux Falls, S.D., a representative city.
May said his team found that women tend to underreport how much they drink when doing maternal interviews, which made it difficult to find out whether a child was exposed to alcohol or not.
