International Collaboration to Develop Scalable Methods for Early Detection of Neurodevelopmental Disorder Due to Prenatal Alcohol Exposure

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

PROJECT SUMMARY Early identification of children who are affected by prenatal exposure to alcohol, i.e., who have Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD), is essential to initiating early intervention. Early interventions can take advantage of neuroplasticity in young children and thus can improve outcomes for a child with FASD. However, current methods of testing young children for neurodevelopmental impairments are limited in their effectiveness and costly to administer. As a result, many children are not recognized as having FASD and years of appropriate and beneficial intervention or treatment are missed. Given the high prevalence of FASD in areas of the world where the disorder has been studied, earlier and more accurate recognition of children with FASD is of high public health importance. Building on the existing Collaborative Initiative on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (CIFASD) longitudinal cohort study in Ukraine, we will fill this critical gap by testing three novel, technology- based and scalable methods that can identify impairments in brain functioning in young children. These novel measures can lead to earlier, rapid, more accurate, and cost-efficient detection of neurodevelopmental disorders due to prenatal alcohol. Furthermore, the scalable methods being tested have global