LAUSR

It is well established that consumption of alcohol during pregnancy negatively impacts fetal development, causing a range of physical and mental impairments (Lunde et al., 2016). As such, women are advised to refrain from alcohol consumption throughout their pregnancy. However, it takes several weeks for a woman to know she is pregnant, and thus she may unknowingly expose her fetus to alcohol early in gestation. The degree to which periconceptional alcohol consumption might impact the cardiovascular health of the offspring was addressed in a recent paper by Dorey et al. (2023). Specifically, the authors evaluated, in rats, fetal cardiac growth, in addition to cardiac function in adult male and female offspring of dams that were exposed to vehicle or ethanol from 4 days before to 4 days after mating. Overall, they report that despite treatment-related impacts on fetal cardiac growth rates, cardiac function was largely unchanged until 12 months of age, when female offspring of dams exposed to ethanol exhibited a significant reduction in cardiac output. Periconceptional ethanol also resulted in female-specific increases in in cardiac gene expression of angiotensin II type 1a receptor (Agtr1a) and estrogen receptor alpha (Esr1) of 19-month-old offspring. Dorey et al. (2023) show that in young adult (5to 7-month-old) offspring, cardiac function and acute cardiac functional responses to global ischaemia when measured ex vivo are not significantly altered in male or female offspring, regardless of periconceptional ethanol exposure. The finding that cardiac consequences are not revealed