A new report suggests that women who take folic acid supplements during the first two months of pregnancy were less likely to have kids with severe language delays according to a study out of Norway. It is already widely know and advised as part of maternity health insurance to take folic acid to reduce the risk of certain types of birth defects, in fact both the U.S. and Canada fortify grain products with folic acid to ensure that pregnant women get enough of it.
Elsewhere around the world however that is not the case, this has medical professionals and international health insurance firms concerned that pregnant women are not getting enough of the B vitamin, particularly in underdeveloped countries. This news comes amid a growing trend that expectant mothers should practice healthy lifestyles not only just for the pregnancy but also for the subsequent development of the child.
The study looked at 40,000 Norwegian women a few months into their pregnancies and looked at the types of supplements that the women took before and after conception. They then looked at the same women (and their children) three years later. The researchers focused mainly on the child’s language skills, including how many words they could string together in a phrase. They found that toddlers who could only say one word at a time or who had “unintelligible utterances” were considered to have severe language delay. They found that only four out of 1,000 kids born to women who took folic acid and/or combined other vitamins had severe language delays. This was compared to nine out of 1,000 kids whose moms didn’t take folic acid before and early in pregnancy.
While the study does not prove that folic acid, itself, prevents language delay, the research said that the vitamin is known to affect the growth of neurons and could influence how proteins are made from certain genes. However they believe that more research is needed to support the new study.