Pregnant women warned on vitamins, obesity
Friday April 9th, 2010
Vitamin supplements are not a good way of helping pregnant women avoid the dangerous complications of high blood pressure, researchers revealed yesterday.
A study involving more than 10,000 women searched for benefits from taking high doses of vitamin E and C - and found none.
The
research found that the vitamins offered women no protection against pre-eclampsia,
one of the most dangerous kinds of high blood pressure that pregnant women
can develop.
Dr Alan Guttmacher, of the US-based Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which helped finance the research, said: "The study results effectively rule out vitamin C and E supplements as a means to prevent the hypertensive disorders seen in pregnancy."
Researcher Dr Catherine Spong said: "In the United States, obstetricians generally recommend that pregnant women take a multivitamin formulated for pregnancy, especially if they aren't eating a well-balanced diet.
"In our study, participants took supplements containing higher doses of vitamins C and E-about ten times the amount in typical prenatal vitamins-in addition to any pregnancy vitamins they may have been taking."
She added: "In this case, it shows us that what originally appeared to be a promising treatment did not actually offer any benefit clinically."
* A second study from the same centre warns that women who are obese when they become pregnant face an increased risk of giving birth to a child with a heart defect.
The study found the risk increased by about 15 per cent when a mother has been obese. It has been reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Dr Guttmacher said: "The current findings strongly suggest that by losing weight before they become pregnant, obese women may reduce the chances that their infants will be born with heart defects."
Researchers studied the records of more than 1.5 million births in New York State, USA, for their research.
The researchers said the study did not show conclusively that an overweight woman could protect her future child by slimming down before becoming pregnant.
New England Journal of Medicine April 8 2010
Tags: Child Health | Childbirth and Pregnancy | Diet & Food | North America | Women’s Health & Gynaecology
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