Nicotinamide, a form of vitamin B3, seems to prevent fetal harm when administered to pregnant rats who are given large doses of alcohol, researchers say.

The BBC reported Feb. 21 that researchers from Cornell University injected pregnant rats with a dose of alcohol equal to a binge-drinking episode by a human mother. The dose was large enough to cause cell death and behavioral abnormalities in the fetus.

However, when researchers followed the alcohol dose with an injection of nicotinamide, cell death was arrested and no behavioral problems developed.

"The piece suggest you can block one drug (alcohol in the form of ethanol) with another drug which may have its own side effects and cause different types of harm during pregnancy," said Raja Mukherjee, a FAS expert at St. George's Hospital Medical School in London. "Surely the safest way, as the piece suggests, is to not take anything in the first place rather than block the effects of one thing with another. This is not to detract from the importance of the work for those people -- i.e. chronic alcoholics -- who find it impossible to stop."