Light drinkers were older, better educated, married, had a better income and were less likely to be overweight.
Heavy drinkers tended to be the youngest, unmarried, smoke during pregnancy and come from low income households.
We made sure to take account of these hong kong rcs data findings in our analysis, so that we could be sure that any association we found between drinking in pregnancy and autism spectrum disorder wasn’t actually due to smoking, for example.
The results of this study found no connection between light and moderate alcohol consumption during pregnancy and children’s subsequent diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.
Because of the limited number of cases, it was hard to draw a conclusion regarding the association between heavy alcohol consumption during pregnancy and children’s subsequent diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.
This is important as it is important to provide up to date advice on alcohol drinking to women who are pregnant, or considering becoming pregnant. This finding adds to other studies which have been done which also suggest that low to moderate alcohol consumption in pregnancy does not increase the risk of autism spectrum disorder.