Maternal Alcohol Consumption During Pregnancy and the Risk of Autism Spectrum Disorders in Offspring: A Retrospective Analysis of the Millennium Cohort Study

The objective of this retrospective analysis of the longitudinal Millennium Cohort Study was to examine whether maternal alcohol consumption in pregnancy (MACP) is associated with the development of childhood autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Data on MACP and ASD were obtained from parental questionnaires. There were 18,168 singleton mother-child pairs with data on MACP, and 12,595 answered the question on ASD when the children were 11 years old. No statistically significant association was found between MACP and ASD for light (OR 0.78, 95% CI 0.48-1.29), moderate (OR 0.89, 95% CI 0.35-2.27), or heavy (OR 1.54, 95% CI 0.56-4.21) MACP. Alcohol consumption during pregnancy was not associated with the risk of developing ASD in this study cohort.