Effects of Common Teratogens on Prenatal Development: Alcohol, Smoking, and Drugs

Abstract

Teratogens are responsible for a large number of congenital abnormalities. The repercussions of ignorance to the agents a pregnant person could possibly be exposed to can result in irreversible malformation in a fetus. This paper uses studies done by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to explore three major teratogenic agents--alcohol, smoking, and drugs--and the effects they can have on a fetus on the molecular level, with a focus on the specific components that cause the defects and the possible abnormalities that the fetus is at risk of.