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About 10% of women in the U.S. report using alcohol during pregnancy (about 2% binge drink); use is higher earlier in pregnancy, possibly because women who drink alcohol are likelier to experience unplanned pregnancies. To examine how being pregnant affects risk for alcohol use disorder (AUD), investigators used Swedish national registries to compare AUD diagnoses among some 320,000 pregnant women born between 1975 and 1992, 40,000 sisters, 112,000 female cousins, and 1.6 million nonpregnant controls.
AUD rates during first pregnancies were significantly lower than in controls, cousins, and siblings (odds ratios, 0.32, 0.31, and 0.22, respectively). In within-individual analyses, lower AUD risk also occurred in second pregnancies, and the AU…