By: 17 September 2013

Maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy has detrimental effects on foetal central nervous system development.

Maternal alcohol consumption prior to and during pregnancy significantly affects cognitive functions in offspring, which may be related to changes in cyclin-dependent kinase 5 because it is associated with modulation of synaptic plasticity and impaired learning and memory.

Prof Ruiling Zhang and team from Xinxiang Medical University explored the correlation between cyclin-dependent kinase 5 expression in the hippocampus and neurological impairments following prenatal ethanol exposure, and found that prenatal ethanol exposure could affect cyclin-dependent kinase 5 and its activator p35 in the hippocampus of offspring rats.

These findings, reported in the Neural Regeneration Research, propose new insights into the mechanisms underlying the role of ethanol exposure in central nervous system injuries, and provide a new strategy for treating the consequences of prenatal ethanol exposure.