Monitoramento tecnológico de terapêuticas utilizadas para prevenção e tratamento da síndrome alcoólica fetal do período pré ao pós-natal

Abstract

Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is the most severe form that fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) can take. Its incidence is six to nine cases per 1000 live births, and it affects as many people as other developmental disorders such as anencephaly and Down syndrome. It is a public health problem. Despite this, the main strategy to prevent it consists of alcohol abstinence during pregnancy, which is flawed when you consider the number of women who consume alcohol unaware of their pregnancy, and those who are addicted to it or abuse the substance. And the treatment strategies are still very much focused on educational resources, because the damage to the central nervous system and to the growth of other affected organs cannot yet been reversed. Therefore, the objective of this study was to perform a technological monitoring of the therapeutic measures used to mitigate, treat, and prevent fetal alcoholism syndrome from the prenatal to the postnatal period. To this end, the main national and international databases of articles and patents were used. The search was made using keywords in Portuguese and English. This was followed by an analysis to filter the documents with the inclusion and exclusion criteria adopted in this research. With the data obtained it was possible to observe that the United States was the country with the greatest presence in the publication of articles (65.3%) and in the filing of patents (41.5%). Research institutes were the main patent depositors (34.1%). Much of the research used animal models, with murine and the fish Danio rerio being the most frequent, in articles and in patent documents. Most of the treatments found were administered in the prenatal period, with growth abnormalities as the target, considering the range of systems and organs that can be affected within this group. The most commonly found therapies were those capable of blocking the development of fetal alcohol syndrome, preventing its pathology from appearing. Most of the papers found coming from the United States, can be considered a consequence of the recognition of FAS as a public health problem since the 1980s and its encouragement of research in the area. The large use of murine animals found here is due to their similarity to humans in that both are placental mammals, and the growth of zebrafish as a model FAS animal seen here is due to their transparent eggs, allowing visualization of embryonic development. Administration in the prenatal period is probably due to the greater ease of providing treatment through the mother, and there is a greater chance of blocking the teratogenicity of alcohol. Blocking the development of FAS was the most commonly found strategy probably because of the irreversibility of damage to the central nervous system once it arises. With the present research, it was possible to conclude that the production of articles in the area is still greater than that of patents, and most studies are still limited to tests in animal models, in need of further clinical testing.