Scottish Advanced Fetal Research Study

In-utero exposure to drugs and chemicals through maternal smoking, alcohol use, drug abuse, prescription medicines and occupational/lifestyle exposures is widespread. Such exposures can alter fetal development and programming, leading to the effects becoming "locked in" from birth and causing long-term adverse consequences for the individual. These include costly and widespread conditions such as obesity, hypertension, metabolic syndrome and infertility. The weight of evidence linking these conditions to fetal recreational drug or environmental chemical exposures, including cigarettes, alcohol, air pollution, food contact materials, is overwhelming. What is lacking is an understanding of how fetal drug exposure translates to adult ill-health and this is due, largely, to an inability to study the problem directly in affected human fetuses. The investigators, and others, have shown that hu