Parental abstention from alcohol reduces an infant’s risk of being born with congenital heart disease.

Congenital heart disease is an umbrella term for a range of heart conditions that are present at birth. Approximately 1 percent of all children worldwide are born with the conditions. Findings from a 2019 meta-analysis suggest that parental abstention from alcohol reduces an infant’s risk of being born with congenital heart disease.

Alcohol elicits an array of harmful effects on the human body and is widely considered a toxin. Consuming alcohol is associated with an increased risk of many disorders, including infectious diseases, cancer, neuropsychiatric diseases, cardiovascular disease, liver and pancreas disease, metabolic dysfunction, obesity, and unintentional and intentional injury. Health experts advise women who are pregnant to avoid alcohol to reduce the risk of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder as well as other developmental delays and disorders.

The investigators searched the scientific literature to identify studies examining links between paternal alcohol consumption and congenital heart disease risk. They filtered their results based on a set of criteria designed to identify studies of high quality. Finally, they combined data from these high-quality studies and reanalyzed it so they could interpret the results on a large scale.

They identified 55 studies involving nearly 42,000 infants with congenital heart disease and nearly 300,000 without. Infants whose mothers consumed alcohol three months before pregnancy or during the first trimester were 16 percent more likely to develop congenital heart disease. However, if a father consumed alcohol during those timeframes, his infant was 44 percent more likely to develop the condition. Infants whose fathers binge drank were 52 percent more likely to develop congenital heart disease. When the investigators looked at specific diseases, they found that infants whose mothers drank alcohol before or during pregnancy were 20 percent more likely to develop tetralogy of Fallot, a rare condition caused by a combination of four heart defects that are present at birth. Infants with tetralogy of Fallot are often referred to as “blue babies” due to the cyanosis that manifests with the condition.

These findings suggest that parental consumption of alcohol in the months before or during early pregnancy increases an infant’s risk for developing congenital heart disease. This risk is markedly higher for fathers, whose roles in their offspring’s health are becoming more evident. For example, research suggests that infants of fathers who exercise have better metabolic health later in life.

• View full publication.