A HEALTH watchdog has issued stricter advice to pregnant women on how much alcohol they should drink.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) has dropped draft guidance published last autumn which said it was fine for women to drink the equivalent of a small glass of wine daily after the first trimester.
Now Nice, which c
overs England and Wales, says women should avoid alcohol but, if they choose to drink, they should have no more than two units, twice a week.
The new guidance tallies with that given by Scotland's Chief Medical Officer.
Nice admitted yesterday that there was no fresh evidence to support its stance, which will see its views align more closely to the government's. The Department of Health advised in May 2007 that pregnant women and those trying to conceive should cut out drinking altogether.
Women who do choose to drink after the first trimester should have no more than one to two units of alcohol once or twice a week and should not get drunk, says the report.
The Nice guidance echoes this and says women should not binge-drink during pregnancy (defined as more than 7.5 units on a single occasion).
However, its draft guidance published in the autumn said was there no evidence that a small glass of wine a day caused any harm after the first trimester.
That guidance said: "If you do drink while you are pregnant it is better to limit yourself to one standard unit of alcohol a day (roughly the equivalent of 125ml – a small glass)." Nice said at the time there was "no consistent evidence" to show that a small amount of alcohol damaged unborn children.
The full article contains 287 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
