Prenatal Exposure to Folic Acid Appears to Promote Healthy Brain Development

Increased prenatal exposure to folic acid, which is known to reduce the risk of neural tube defects, may also promote healthy brain development through adolescence, reports astudy published inJAMA Psychiatry. According to the study authors, prenatal exposure to folic acid may protect against psychosis through altered postnatal cortical development. Some studies suggest poor maternal nutrition during pregnancy increases subsequent risks for conditions like schizophrenia in offspring; other studies have suggested that prenatal exposure to folic acid may lower the risk of language delay and autism in children. In 1996, the U.S. government mandated that all food manufacturers fortify enriched grain products with folic acid by January 1, 1998. To examine whether prenatal exposure to folic acid is associated with changes in brain development later in life, Hamdi Eryilmaz, Ph.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital and colleagues compared cortical brain development in youth who were born before, during, and after the full implementation of folic acid fortification of U.S. grain products.Eryilmaz and colleagues analyzed multiple sets of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans taken when children and adolescents born from 1993 to 2001 were ages 8 to 18: one set consisted of normal brain images taken from 292 patients seen at Massachusetts General Hospital; another set included images from 861 participants in the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort, a study that assessed psychiatr...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: brain development cortex folic acid Hamdi Eryilmaz JAMA Psychiatry maternal nutrition pregnancy prenatal care schizophrenia Source Type: research