The discovery of a new way to block the toxicity of alcohol is a step towards a drug that protects unborn children against the damage caused by excessive drinking by their mothers.

Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) is the most prevalent avoidable cause of mental retardation in children, affecting three babies per thousand live births in the United States. Stopping drinking is the best preventive solution but this is often too difficult for mothers with a drink problem. Counselling to motivate them appears to have only a 30% chance of success.

A protective product will not be available for some years yet, but the most recent research shows how the embryonal brain may be protected against alcohol. Michael Charness and his research team at Harvard Medical School found that a fragment of a protein that goes by the name of NAP can prevent alcohol from preventing the neurons from connecting with each other during the development of the brain.

The team had already observed that alcohol acts on L1, a protein that helps the neurons to interconnect. It had already been demonstrated that NAP was suitable to prevent FAS in mice.

However, it was still uncertain whether NAP could more specifically block the negative effects of alcohol in the brain or was, rather, a consequence of the known effect of NAP against neurological damage. The researchers found that NAP quite specifically blocked the harmful effects of ethanol and that only a very small amount of NAP was needed to provide protection; fewer nerve symptoms were therefore to be expected.

Behavioural psychologists welcome such a product as being most helpful for FAS-risk mothers. But they warn against a treatment that may allow a mother to carry on drinking during pregnancy because of the numerous other social and medical problems of alcohol.

Some recent studies even suggest that moderate drinking may lead to loss of concentration, impaired motor ability and limited emotional development in babies.

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