An investigation of the effects of ethanol on neural crest cell migration and adhesion

Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) may result when women drink alcoholic beverages while pregnant. The symptoms of FAS consist of facial disfigurements such as improperly formed nasal process, brow ridge, cleft palate, lips, and jaws. FAS can also cause premature abortions, prenatal mortality, congenital heart defects, and nervous system malfunctions. Some of these defects may be caused by disrupting cranial neural crest cells from developing into normal facial cartilage, facial muscle, structures of the mouth, neck muscle, and neck bone. Under normal conditions neural crest cells migrate away from the neural tube, through extracellular matrix, and come to rest where they will differentiate into different cell types. To determine how alcohol disrupts this development, ethanol was added at different concentrations, to cultures of neural crest cells obtained by standard methods. It was shown that ethanol inhibits migration and adhesion of the cranial neural crest cells in a dose dependent manner.