3:06 AM
Anonymous
Women who fail to take folic acid in early pregnancy could be threatening their child's ability to speak according to scientists.
A study has revealed that mothers who don't take the vitamin supplement are twice as likely to have children with severe speech delays.
Experts at Columbia University in New York, say that the results highlight the health benefits of folic acid which is already known to reduce the risk of certain types of birth defects.
Around 40,000 Norwegian women were questioned during the first stage of pregnancy on what supplements they were taking four weeks before and eight weeks after conception.
Three years later researchers revisited the women investigating their children's language skills, including how many words they could string together in a phrase.
Toddlers who could only say one word at a time or who had 'unintelligible utterances' were considered to have severe language delay.
The scientists found four out of 1,000 children born to women who took folic acid had severe language delays. However, this rose to nine out of 1,000 children if the mothers hadn't taken folic acid.
Folic acid has been linked to aiding language development
'What you do during pregnancy... is not only important for birth but also for subsequent development.'
The pattern remained after Dr Susser's team took into account other detrimental factors, such as a mother's weight and education, and her marital status.
They wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association that the study can't prove that folic acid, itself, prevents language delay and more research is needed.
Usha Ramakrishnan, a maternal and child nutrition researcher from Emory University in Atlanta who wasn't involved in the study said: 'Clearly it plays a role in development that starts very early in pregnancy.
'I think this adds to what's already known about the benefits of folic acid.'
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