Survey finds 11.5% of US pregnant women report drinking, 3.9% binge drinking in past month

An observational survey study assessed the prevalence of alcohol consumption among pregnant women aged 18-44 years in the United States. The exposure was self-reported consumption of alcohol beverages and binge drinking, with recall covering the past 30 days. No comparator group was reported, and the sample size was not specified.

The main results showed that 11.5% of pregnant women surveyed reported current drinking, and 3.9% reported binge drinking during the past month. No effect sizes, absolute numbers, p-values, or confidence intervals were reported for these prevalence estimates. The study did not report on primary or secondary clinical outcomes related to these drinking behaviors.

Safety and tolerability data were not reported. Key limitations include the observational, cross-sectional survey design relying on self-reported behavior, which may be subject to recall or social desirability bias. The data represent association, not causation, and generalizability is limited to US pregnant women in this age range. The study did not assess clinical outcomes from alcohol exposure.

Practice relevance is restrained; the data indicate a non-trivial proportion of pregnant patients report recent alcohol use. Clinicians should be aware of these behaviors when counseling patients, recognizing these are prevalence estimates from survey data without established links to specific fetal outcomes in this study.