New perspectives on the face in fetal alcohol syndrome: what anthropometry tells us.

Abstract

Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) refers to the adverse effects to the fetus from prenatal exposure to alcohol. Originally, the diagnosis of FAS was given only to those individuals that were the most severely affected. Since that time, it has become apparent that the effects of prenatal alcohol exposure are broad-based, and those individuals diagnosed with FAS represent the severe end of the continuum in their phenotypic expression. This study utilized 21 craniofacial anthropometric measurements on 100 prenatally exposed individuals to quantify the elements of the FAS facial phenotype and to extend the quantitative phenotype to individuals who exhibited less severe or incomplete manifestations of prenatal alcohol exposure.