Folic acid reduces severity of birth defects

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Folic acid in the diet not only helps prevent birth defects but also improves the one-year survival rate of children who are born with defects, researchers reported on Monday.

The investigators evaluated the records of 2,841 infants born with spina bifida and 638 born with encephalocele, a herniation of a portion of the brain caused by failure of the skull to fuse. Data were compared for infants born between 1998 and 2001, a period in which folic acid fortification in food was mandatory, and infants born before 1998.

Dr. Russell S. Kirby of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and colleagues found that 92.1 percent of these children survived the first year of life, compared with a 90 percent first-year survival rate among infants born prior to 1998, before folic acid fortification.

"Folic acid may play a role in restricting the severity of neural tube defects in addition to preventing the occurrence (of them)," Kirby's group writes in the current issue of Pediatrics.

Folic acid is a B vitamin found in leafy green vegetables, fruits and other foods and is widely used as a dietary supplement during pregnancy to prevent spinal and neural birth defects.

An editorial that accompanies the study points out that these findings are another reason to increase the level of folic acid in fortified foods in the United States.

The research "is a stern reminder that, although the severity of spina bifida may have decreased with fortification, too many children continue to develop (it) because our enriched grains do not have enough folic acid."

The editorial calls for a doubling of the current level.