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Published in: Italian Journal of Pediatrics 1/2016

Open Access 01-12-2016 | Review

Association between alcohol consumption during pregnancy and risks of congenital heart defects in offspring: meta-analysis of epidemiological observational studies

Authors: Zhongyuan Wen, Di Yu, Weiyan Zhang, Changfeng Fan, Liang Hu, Yu Feng, Lei Yang, Zeyu Wu, Runsen Chen, Ke-jie Yin, Xuming Mo

Published in: Italian Journal of Pediatrics | Issue 1/2016

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Abstract

Background

To explore the association between maternal alcohol consumption and/or binge drinking and congenital heart defects (CHDs), we conducted a meta-analysis for more sufficient evidence on this issue.

Methods

We searched Medline, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library from their inceptions to December 2014 for case-control and cohort studies that assessed the association between maternal alcohol consumption and CHD risk. Study-specific relative risk estimates were calculated using random-effect or fixed-effect models.

Results

A total of 19 case-control studies and 4 cohort studies were included in the meta-analysis. We observed a null association between maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy and the risk of CHDs. Even in the analysis of different trimesters of pregnancy, we found little association between the two.

Conclusions

This meta-analysis suggests that maternal alcohol consumption is modestly not associated with the risk of CHDs. However, further investigation is needed to confirm this conclusion.
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Metadata
Title
Association between alcohol consumption during pregnancy and risks of congenital heart defects in offspring: meta-analysis of epidemiological observational studies
Authors
Zhongyuan Wen
Di Yu
Weiyan Zhang
Changfeng Fan
Liang Hu
Yu Feng
Lei Yang
Zeyu Wu
Runsen Chen
Ke-jie Yin
Xuming Mo
Publication date
01-12-2016
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
Italian Journal of Pediatrics / Issue 1/2016
Electronic ISSN: 1824-7288
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13052-016-0222-2

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