Washington: Changes in foetal environment, including expectant mothers taking excessive alcohol during pregnancy, may be responsible for the high rate of heart defects or other metabolic medical disorders in children, particularly female infants, says a study.

Researchers at the Chicago-based Asher Centre of the Northwestern University Medical School and Jeff Schwartz of the Department of Physiology, University of Adelaide in Adelaide, Australia found that cardiac malformations exist in children with foetal alcohol syndrome.

They said that the high incidence of heart defects was an indication that alcoholism during pregnancy had to be considered a serious and preventable cause of congenital heart disease.

It was also felt that low birth weight was linked to later emergence of disorders like ischemic heart disease, hypertension, insulin resistance, and non-insulin-dependent diabetes.

Jennifer Slone Wilcoxon, Fraser Aird, and Eva E. Redei, the authors of "Sexually Dimorphic Effects of Maternal Alcohol Intake and Adrenalectomy on Left Ventricular Hypertrophy in Rat Offspring", claimed that consistently low birth weight was found to be associated with prenatal exposure to glucocorticoid steroids.

They said their investigations had revealed that even a brief prenatal exposure to elevated glucocorticoids could result in permanent adverse changes in the adult offspring's cardiovascular system.

Though glucocorticoids are important in normal development, they warned that excessive exposure through the mother leads to low birth weight.

Maternal alcohol ingestion is also associated with elevated glucocorticoid levels and low birth weight in the foetus.

They hypothesised that high developmental exposure, followed by low levels of foetal glucocorticoids, leads to cardiovascular vulnerability of the foetal alcohol-exposed (FAE) offspring.

Removal of the maternal adrenal glands, and the ensuing low levels of maternal Cort, should eliminate cardiovascular problems found in adult offspring, they added.

ANI