Does light drinking during pregnancy improve pregnancy outcome? A critical commentary.

A recent study published from the University College London suggests that children of women who were light drinkers during pregnancy demonstrate better cognitive outcome at three years of age when compared to children of abstinent women based on data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study. Unfortunately, methodological pitfalls and limited external validity of the results presented make conclusions very tenuous. This paper was widely quoted by the media, sometimes concluding that drinking is beneficial. At the present state of knowledge, the poor quality of this study may cause more damage than benefit, as demonstrated by the media response.