Recently published findings from two international follow-up studies show that offspring development may be greatly affected by the vitamin supplements their mothers took when pregnant.
This research is likely to open the door to further studies in the area of prenatal supplementation and could eventually influence the vitamins prescribed to pregnant women.
Follow-up studies show links between intelligence and supplements
Adolescents whose mothers received multiple micronutrient supplements during pregnancy showed notably higher intellectual development than the offspring of women who took folic acid, according to Chinese researchers.
The research, reported this July in the American Medical Association Pediatrics Journal, began with a clinical trial of 2,118 randomly selected women from two rural Chinese provinces who were given vitamin supplements during their pregnancies. Some received supplements with folic acid or folic acid plus iron capsules, while others received micronutrient supplements.
In a follow-up study 14 years later, the intelligence of their offspring was assessed using the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. The assessment covered working memory, perceptual reasoning, processing speed indexes, along with full-scale intelligence quotient and aspects of verbal comprehension.
"In comparison with folic acid plus iron or folic acid supplementation, the antenatal multiple micronutrient supplementation appeared to be associated with increased adolescent intellectual development," report journal authors.
Study findings demonstrated that when supplementation was initiated prior to 12 weeks of gestation and taken for a minimum of 180 days, the adolescents whose mothers took multiple micronutrient capsules had full-scale intelligence quotients 2.16 points higher than the folic acid groups. Verbal comprehension index scores were a whopping 4.29 points higher.
Autism may be reduced by multivitamin use during pregnancy
Taking multivitamins during pregnancy may help in the prevention of autism with intellectual disability in offspring, according to research conducted at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
Lead researcher Dr. Elizabeth DeVibiss, who published her team’s findings last October notes that previous research suggests that autism spectrum disorders (ASD) develop prenatally. This led her to believe that maternal nutrition, an important influence on neurodevelopment, may serve as a means of reducing ASD risk.
The research team was interested in determining whether nonheritable ASD risk factors could be reduced through nutritional supplementation during pregnancy.
Key to their study was the analysis of population registery data in Stockholm County, Sweden, where they reviewed 273,107 mother-child pairs of offspring born between 1996 and 2007. Follow-up studies were concluded in 2011 when the children were between the ages of 4 and 15.
Researchers observed significant differences in health and socioeconomic characteristics when they compared the supplement user groups. In comparison to women who took no supplements, multivitamin users were generally older, Swedish-born with higher education and family income levels, and less likelihood of smoking.
The mothers taking iron with or without folic acid, on the other hand, tended to be younger, less educated, have lower family incomes and more likely to be smokers and immigrants than nonsupplement takers.
In terms of income and education levels, folic acid users were similar to multivitamin users; however, they were more likely to be smokers, immigrants and to have epilepsy. Interestingly, Depression and antidepressant use were slightly more prevalent among all categories of supplement users vs. nonusers.
Research results showed that ASD prevalence was only 0.26 percent among mothers who took multivitamins whereas it 0.48 percent among those with no nutritional supplementation. Use of neither iron nor folic acid was inversely associated with cases of ASD.
Maternal multivitamin use with or without additional iron or folic acid or both was associated with lower risk for ASD with intellectual disability compared with children whose mothers did not use multivitamins, iron and folic acid.
"We observed a potential inverse association between maternal multivitamin supplement use and ASD with intellectual disability in offspring. Whether the association is specific to autism or reflects the risk of intellectual disability needs to be explored in future research," the researchers concluded.
"Given the current understanding and strength of evidence supporting the importance of nutritional supplementation during pregnancy, these results on their own should not change current practice. Still, these findings raise questions that warrant investigation."
