Certain drugs which affect fetal development are considered. Phenytoin taken during pregnancy may result in infants who remain mentally and physically retarded, with abnormal craniofacial appearance and limb defects. A boy with such a syndrome is reported. Trimethadione is another drug which has been said to be teratogenic, and to cause a typical phenotype which is described. The fetal alcohol ...

Researchers have developed numerous animal models to investigate the development of various alcohol-related diseases. Such models have provided insights into the mechanism through which alcohol can induce liver damage. Animal models also have helped researchers explore the mechanisms by which both short-term (e.g., binge) and long-term drinking can interfere with the function of the heart, a co...

Background Mental retardation is a developmental disability that first appears at children under the age of 18. About 5% of the mentally retarded population is affected by severe mental retardation. Approximately 20% of the population with mental deficience presents moderate mental retardation and about 75% have mild mental retardation. A very important factor that cause mental retardation of c...

In the USA, fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is the leading known cause of mental retardation. FAS is estimated to affect 4000 infants yearly in the USA with an additional 7000 children suffering various forms of fetal alcohol effects in the absence of the full syndrome. A comparable incidence would be expected in other industrialized countries, but essentially no data are available from either dev...

Controversy exists whether carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT) is valuable as a screening tool for fetal alcohol syndrome. We evaluated serum CDT in 60 non-alcohol-abusing women at different stages of normal pregnancy. CDT was weakly related to week of pregnancy and to human placental lactogen. CDT did not correlate with iron oestradiol or progesterone. By contrast, good correlations were ...