The National Institutes of Health has awarded the University of New Mexico $8.1 million over the next five years for research into fetal alcohol disorders.
The NIH says the New Mexico Alcohol Research Center at UNM's Health Sciences Center is one of 18 alcohol research centers in the U.S., and the only one targeting fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
Research shows that alcohol consumption during pregnancy increases the risk of life-long consequences for a child, including problems with memory, intellectual ability, attention, executive function, language expression, social perception and abstract thinking.
UNM says it's working to better understand how prenatal alcohol exposure damages the brain and to develop better ways to diagnose and treat fetal alcohol-related issues in children.
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