The Detection of Fetal Alcohol Exposure by FAEEs Meconium Analysis

AbstractFetal alcohol exposure can be assessed either retrospectively by directly asking mothers or reliable informants through structured interviews and screening questionnaires or actually by measuring biomarkers of alcohol consumption in pregnancy or in the perinatal phase. For research purposes and even in some clinical cases with a need for objective corroboration of the information given by the mother or when this information is missing, there is the possibility of laboratory assessment of alcohol biomarkers. This review will present the current state of the art of FAEE (fatty acid ethyl esters) meconium analysis. An electronic search of computerized databases was carried out on an English language database (PubMed). The searched keywords in PubMed were “fatty acid ethyl ester AND meconium”. The search was limited to the English language. The PubMed search resulted in 67 articles of which 23 were excluded by the analysis of titles and abstracts. The most frequently employed assay methods were: GC-MS (40.9 %), followed by LC-MS/MS (36.4 %), GC -FID (9.1 %), and GC-FID confirmed by GC-MS (13.6 %).
Source: Current Developmental Disorders Reports - Category: Child Development Source Type: research