Drinking future fathers linked with child heart deficiency

During preconception, infants are 16% more likely to suffer congenital cardiac abnormalities if moms were intoxicated during or in the first three months of pregnancy. When mothers were drinkers, the increased risk was similar.

Jisabi Qin, a senior author of the study and a professor at Xiangya Faculty of Health of Central South University in Changsha, China, said: “To be intoxicated by the supposed family, it’s a very dangerous behavior that can not only increase the chance that their child is born with heart defect, but also seriously damage their own health.”

Qin said in a statement, the results of the studies show that men should stop drinking alcohol at least six months before they try to conceive, and that women should stop for at least a year prior to babies.

Substantial heart defects were the most often recorded in the European Journal of Préventive Cardiology and are the leading cause of infant mortality late in pregnancy as well as in the first few weeks of life. Such defects include systemic cardiac defects that, while children undergo surgery to correct their defects, may raise the risk of cardiovascular disease later in life.

Although previous research has connected parenting to an increased risk of congenital heart defects both before and during delivery, findings are inconsistent and based mostly on mothers rather than parents, according to the study group.