Better diet equals less birth defects

A study in the October issue of Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine examined whether better maternal diet quality was associated with reduced risk for selected birth defects. Increasing diet quality was associated with reduced risks for the birth defects studied. The strongest association was between anencephaly and cleft lip with or without cleft palate. The results suggest that dietary approaches could lead to further reduction in risks of major birth defects and complement existing efforts to fortify foods and encourage periconceptional multivitamin use.

Editor note: The critical period for maternal folate intake seems to be the first few weeks of fetal development. Ensuring adequate folate intake during this period is a vexing problem because the fact of pregnancy may not be known even to the mother at this early stage. The confluence of the problem of getting women of childbearing age to eat an adequate amount of folate with the observation that adequate folate helps prevent neural tube defects (NTDs) led to the addition of folic acid to grain foods in the US food supply starting in 1998. This strategy has been effective in getting folate to young potential mothers and also in reducing NTDs.

Bonnie - this is why it should be essential that young women in child-bearing years take a multivitamin with at minimum 400 mcg. of folate. As the researchers above allude to, food fortification helps, but is not enough.