Vitamin B12 could prevent major birth defects

Source: Agencies | March 3, 2009, Tuesday |

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BEFORE becoming pregnant, women need to get enough vitamin B12 in addition to folic acid to cut their risk of having a baby with a serious birth defect of the brain and spinal cord, researchers said yesterday.

Irish women with the lowest vitamin B12 levels were five times more likely to have a baby with a neural tube defect than those with the highest levels, researchers wrote in the journal Pediatrics.

Neural tube defects can lead to lifelong disability or death. The two most common ones are spina bifida, in which the spinal cord and back bones do not form properly, and anencephaly, a fatal condition in which the brain and skull bones do not develop normally.

Dr James Mills of the US National Institutes of Health, one of the researchers, said the study showed that vitamin B12 deficiency was a risk factor for neural tube defects independent of folic acid, another B vitamin.

Many women now know of the importance of folic acid and there has been a drop in neural tube defects.

Mills said he hopes that awareness of the similar role of vitamin B12 can reduce neural tube defects further.

Vitamin B12 is essential to maintain healthy nerve cells and red blood cells.

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Vitamin B12 could prevent major birth defects

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