Assessment of alcohol consumption in Mexican pregnant women by hair testing of ethyl glucuronide.

Abstract

There are no studies that would have utilized both biomarkers and self-reported data to evaluate maternal alcohol use during pregnancy in Mexico. Therefore, we aimed to describe the prevalence of alcohol consumption in a cohort of 300 Mexican pregnant women. We used a validated ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS) method to measure hair ethyl glucuronide (EtG) in hair segments that corresponded to the first and the second half of the pregnancy. We compared the hair EtG values to a self-reported questionnaire on maternal drinking habits and evaluated whether the gestational alcohol use was associated with psychotropic drug use. Based on the EtG measurements, 263 women (87.7%) were abstinent the whole pregnancy while 37 (12.3%) had used alcohol at least at some time during the pregnancy. Of these, only two women found to have problematic alcoholic behaviour during whole pregnancy. No significant differences in socio demographic characteristics were observed between abstinent women and women with drinking habits. The self-reporting data and hair EtG gave heterogeneous results: Although, 37 women had self-reported alcohol use during pregnancy, only 54.1% of those tested positive for hair EtG had done so. Of the women positive for hair EtG, 54.1% resulted positive for psychoactive substances. In our cohort, the use of drugs of abuse was independent of gestational drinking. This study provided a first objective evidence of prenatal ethanol consumption in a cohort of Mexican pregnant women.