Drinking even small amounts of alcohol when pregnant could alter a baby's features, a new study has found. Researchers examined data from facial images of 415 one-year-old children and found subtle changes in babies' faces – mostly around the nose, eyes and lips – associated with almost all levels of alcohol exposure. Alcohol appeared to affect face shape whether it was drunk in the first trimester or throughout the pregnancy. Yet the facial changes observed in the study were so subtle they were not visible to the naked eye. Researchers used sophisticated 3D imaging software that pinpointed almost 70,000 parts of a baby's face to identify differences between babies whose mothers had drunk some alcohol compared with those whose mothers had not.

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