LINEAR VERSUS NON-LINEAR DOSE-RESPONSE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRENATAL ALCOHOL EXPOSURE AND MECONIUM CONCENTRATION OF NINE DIFFERENT FATTY ACID ETHYL ESTERS

h Presence of individual fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEEs) in meconium is considered to be a reliable biomarker of prenatal alcohol exposure, and their concentration has been found to be linearly associated with poor postnatal development, supporting the widely extended idea that ethanol is a non-threshold teratogen. However, a growing number of epidemi-ological studies have consistently found a lack of adverse short- and long-term fetal out-comes at low exposure levels. We therefore aimed to investigate the relationship between the concentration of individual FAEEs and prenatal alcohol exposure in meconium sam-ples collected within the first 6 to 12?h after birth from 182 babies born to abstainer moth-ers and from 54 babies born to women who self-reported either light or moderate alcohol ingestion in the second or third trimester of pregnancy. In most cases, the individual FAEE concentrations were negligible and not significantly different (P>0.05) between exposed and control babies. The concentrations appeared to increase linearly with the dose onl