Is light drinking during pregnancy safe?

The finding from a UCL study suggesting that a glass of wine a week during pregnancy will not harm your child's development has caused controversy but the lead author said that the more the social factors were taken into account, the weaker the association became.


The study involved over 11,000 women who were asked about their drinking habits and their child's development until they were 5 years old. They found that children born to light drinkers were 30% less likely to have behavioural problems and achieve higher scores on cognitive tests than those whose mothers did not drink during pregnancy.

Some experts said that the study was flawed because it only looked at children up to the age of 5. The Dep of Health said "After assessing the available evidence, we cannot say with confidence that drinking during pregnancy is safe and will not harm your baby...... Our advice to pregnant women and women trying to conceive is to avoid alcohol", reported in the Telegraph.

An US alcohol epidemiologist said that alcohol is the leading fetal neurotoxin in the world, there is no safe amount of alcohol a pregnant woman can drink based on the evidence that alcohol kills brain cells in the developing fetus, reported in White Coat Note.

So the debate goes on.

Source: Light drinking during pregnancy: still no increased risk for socioemotional difficulties or cognitive deficits at 5 years of age? Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 2010, October

Tea and coffee drinkers have a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes

Australian researchers conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis that pooled data from more than 30 studies of the association between tea and coffee consumption and the risk of developing type 2 diabet. About a million of participants were involved.

They found that "high intake of coffee, decaffeinated coffee, and/or tea is associated with a reduction in the risk of new-onset type 2 diabetes" and the compound magnesium and antioxidants in tea and coffee may be involved.

Critics said the studies lacked sufficient data on the effects of these beverages or their components on measures of hyperglycaemia and insulin sensitivity, therefore the mechanisms involved is still unknown. It may not be possible to generalise these findings to other populations because only a small number of particpants were non-white.

Further research into the effect of these beverages on diabetes is warranted, but it is advised that people should not increase their tea or coffee consumption based on these findings.

Source: Huxley R, Man Ying Lee C, Barzi F, et al. "Coffee, Decaffeinated Coffee, and Tea Consumption in Relation to Incident Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus". Arch Intern Med 2009; 169: 2053-2063

Is coffee bad for health?

Researchers analysed data from two cohort studies, one included 41,736 male health professionals and the other 86,214 female nurses and found that regular coffee consumption was not associated with increased death rate in men or women.

In the female cohort, coffee consumption ( including decaffeinated coffee) were associated with significantly lower risk of death compared with no coffee. The reductions ranged from 7% among nurses drinking 5 to 7 cups a week, to 26% among nurses drinking 4 or 5 cups a day.

According to the findings, coffee seemed to protect both men and women against cardiovascular death but not death from cancer. However, critics said that recent studies have offered a mixed picture on the health benefit of coffee consumption.

Source : "The Relationship of Coffee Consumption with Mortality." Annals of Internal Medicine 17 June 2008:148(12); 904-914 (full text via Athens)

Coffee reduces liver cancer risk

Italian researchers carried out a meta-analysis of 10 published studies on the relation between coffee drinking and risk of hepatocelluar carcinoma, a common type of liver cancer. The studies included participants in Greece, Italy and Japan, some with liver cancer and many without.

They found a 41 % reduction in the risk for liver cancer among coffee drinkers compared with those who never drank coffee. The researchers said that the studies from Europe and Japan showed the same relationship between coffee drinking and reduced liver cancer risk suggested consistency of these results. However, they cautioned that it is difficult to "derive a causal inference on the basis of observational studies alone."

The study "Coffee drinking and hepatocellular carcinoma risk: A meta-analysis" is published in the journal Hepatology, Volume 46, Issue 2 (August 2007), pp 430-435. Read the abstract.