IN THIS ISSUE of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 3 additional papers examining the prevalence of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs; May et al., 2020a, 2020b, 2020c) follow the earlier paper by Chambers and colleagues (2019). These studies present state-of-the-art FASD active case ascertainment (ACA) of prevalence among school-age children conducted in the United States and demonstrate the importance of the behind-the-scenes intensive fieldwork necessary to complete studies of this size in community settings. The abundant clinical detail for each case is evident in the data on maternal and child characteristics presented in the papers. These studies confirm that FASD is a highly prevalent disorder in the US general population.

In all 4 papers combined, 2,189 subjects were selected for assessment and 196 met criteria for FASD, including fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS; n= 25, 12.8%), partial FAS (n= 82, 41.8%), and alcohol-related neurodevelopmental disorder (n= 89, 45.4%). These data show that approximately 1 in every 13 children with FASD had FAS. The data also improve our understanding of the lower threshold of teratogenic exposure, which increases the risk for FASD. Chambers and colleagues have found the threshold to be very low, showing 1 drink per drinking day during pregnancy