Abstract
Childhood exposure to alcohol misuse by household adults has been related to childhood developmental delay, cognitive impacts, mental illness, and problem behaviours. Most evidence comes from high income countries. This systematic review only included studies from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Five databases were searched from 1990–2020. Twenty-eight studies of children 0–12 years were included, with 42,599 participants from 11 LMICs. The most common outcome was behavioural problems/disorders (19 studies). Despite varying study designs, this review found that alcohol misuse by household members in LMICs is associated with adverse child neurodevelopmental outcomes, although casual inferences cannot be drawn in the absence of well conducted prospective studies. Statistically significant correlations were described between parental alcohol misuse and child emotional and behavioural difficulties, cognitive delay, and risky behaviours. In future, prospective cohort studies are recommended, with adjustment for confounders.
Highlights
Experiences in childhood have been shown to have a significant impact both on concurrent health and development in later life [1,2,3,4]
Despite heterogeneity in exposure and in settings, we report an overall association between household harmful use of alcohol and a number of negative neurodevelopmental outcomes in children, including behaviour problems, cognitive impairment and performance, fewer cultural/intellectual activities and low self-concept
This review shows that exposure to alcohol misuse by household members in the context of low- and middle-income countries is associated with adverse child neurodevelopmental outcomes, causal inferences cannot be drawn in the absence of well conducted prospective cohort studies which address potential confounding
Summary
This paper aims to synthesise the results of studies from subjects living in lowand middle-income countries, in the hope that findings can inform directions for future research and potentially inform policy recommendations
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