Association between alcohol consumption during pregnancy and risks of congenital heart defects in offspring: meta-analysis of epidemiological observational studies

BACKGROUND: To explore the association between maternal alcohol consumption and/or binge drinking and congenital heart defects (CHDs), we conducted a meta-analysis for more sufficient evidence on this issue. METHODS: We searched Medline, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library from their inceptions to December 2014 for case-control and cohort studies that assessed the association between maternal alcohol consumption and CHD risk. Study-specific relative risk estimates were calculated using random-effect or fixed-effect models. RESULTS: A total of 19 case-control studies and 4 cohort studies were included in the meta-analysis. We observed a null association between maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy and the risk of CHDs. Even in the analysis of different trimesters of pregnancy, we found little association between the two. CONCLUSIONS: This meta-analysis suggests that maternal alcohol consumption is modestly not associated with the risk of CHDs. However, further investigation is needed to confirm this conclusion.