August 11, 2008
Albuquerque Journal
Center Focuses on Fetal Alcohol
By Olivier Uyttebrouck, Journal Staff WriterA federal agency has tapped the University of New Mexico to house a new center focused on fetal alcohol-related disorders.
The New Mexico Alcohol Research Center will specialize in fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, said Dr. Daniel Savage, chairman of UNM's Department of Neurosciences and a regents' professor.
Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder is a range of behavioral problems associated with women who drink alcohol during pregnancy.
The National Institutes of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse last month awarded UNM a five-year $2.5 million grant to create the center.
The center will search for "better understanding, earlier diagnosis and better treatments" for fetal alcohol-related disorders, said Savage, who will direct the center.
"We now project that about 1 percent of kids born in this country will have fetal alcohol spectrum disorder," he said.
Only a small minority of those children are born with full-blown fetal alcohol syndrome, a disorder marked by visible birth defects such as flattened facial features and small body size, he said.
"There are many more children affected by maternal drinking that would not be diagnosed by fetal alcohol syndrome," Savage said. "That's the part of the spectrum that we're trying to focus on with this center."
Such children often show no obvious physical defects at birth, which makes diagnosis difficult, he said. Instead, problems crop up as the children get older.
"As their brains mature they will start to have a variety of behavioral problems that may not manifest until high school," Savage said. Problems may appear as early as middle school, he said.
Such problems may include problems with abstract thinking, difficulty learning and other complex tasks and disciplinary problems, he said.
Earlier diagnosis could lead to better treatments for the disorder, he said.