Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders: Awareness to Insight in Just 50 Years

Abstract

This article is part of a Festschrift commemorating the 50th anniversary of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). Established in 1970, first as part of the National Institute of Mental Health and later as an independent institute of the National Institutes of Health, NIAAA today is the world's largest funding agency for alcohol research. In addition to its own intramural research program, NIAAA supports the entire spectrum of innovative basic, translational, and clinical research to advance the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of alcohol use disorder and alcohol-related problems. To celebrate the anniversary, NIAAA hosted a 2-day symposium, "Alcohol Across the Lifespan: 50 Years of Evidence-Based Diagnosis, Prevention, and Treatment Research," devoted to key topics within the field of alcohol research. This article is based on Dr. Charness' presentation at the event. NIAAA Director George F. Koob, Ph.D., serves as editor of the Festschrift.

NIAAA 50th Anniversary Festschrift: From the Editor

“…Research on understanding how prenatal alcohol exposure affects development as well as on the prevention and mitigation of the effects of prenatal alcohol exposure have been a long-standing research priority for NIAAA since the recognition of fetal alcohol syndrome in the early 1970s. Dr. Charness summarizes research demonstrating advances in our understanding in “Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders: Awareness to Insight in Just 50 Years.” 17 …”

“…Dr. Charness summarizes research demonstrating advances in our understanding in "Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders: Awareness to Insight in Just 50 Years." 17 Finally, Dr. Ramkissoon and Dr. Shah review the current state of knowledge for one of the most common consequences of alcohol misuse, alcohol-associated liver disease, in "Alcohol Use Disorder and Alcohol-Associated Liver Disease." Alcohol-associated liver disease is a major contributor to alcohol-related mortality, and its treatment remains an unmet clinical need.…”

Multi-donor human cortical Chimeroids reveal individual susceptibility to neurotoxic triggers

“…To demonstrate the utility of the Chimeroid model to investigate inter-individual variability in response to perturbation, we tested the effects of two neurotoxic triggers that cause neurodevelopmental abnormalities: ethanol (EtOH) and valproic acid (VPA). Fetal exposure to EtOH in humans can result in Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) (Alfonso-Loeches & Guerri, 2011; Arzua et al, 2020; Carpita et al, 2022; Charness, 2022; Eberhart & Parnell, 2016; Granato & Dering, 2018; Marguet et al, 2022; Streissguth & Dehaene, 1993; Sulik et al, 1981; Wozniak et al, 2018), with high inter-individual variation in clinical phenotype(Eberhart & Parnell, 2016). Valproic acid (VPA), used to treat epilepsy and psychiatric disorders, is associated with augmented risk of developing autism related disorders (ASD) in offspring when administered during pregnancy (Bjørk et al, 2022; Christensen et al, 2013).…”

Sex-Related Differences in Voluntary Alcohol Intake and mRNA Coding for Synucleins in the Brain of Adult Rats Prenatally Exposed to Alcohol

“…Maternal alcohol drinking leading to prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) is one of the strong predictive factors of AUD [ 3 ]. Neurobehavioral disorder associated with prenatal alcohol exposure can occur in children following even low to moderate levels of maternal ethanol consumption during pregnancy and touch on the basic components of cognition—learning, memory, executive functions, affective state anxiety and depression, and addictive behavior later in life [ 4 , 5 ]. To date the epigenetic mechanisms underlying high risk of drug abuse which arise from maternal consumption of alcohol are unclear.…”