Folic acid linked to mental illness prevention in womb
Supplements, fortified foods urged for pregnant women
Women may be able to prevent severe mental illness in their children by consuming enough folic acid — found in foods such as grains, rice, cereal and bread — while they’re pregnant, according to researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital.
“The idea that the risk for these illnesses begins in the womb has gained biological support in recent years,” said Dr. Joshua Roffman of the MGH Department of Psychiatry and senior author of the report. “The field is really moving in the direction of prevention.”
Roffman and his colleagues reviewed two sets of MRIs taken from children — one group from those born before the government began requiring certain food products to be fortified with folic acid, and one group born after the mandate was instituted. Researchers found that the cerebral cortex was significantly thinner in those who received less folic acid in the womb — a characteristic associated with both autism and schizophrenia, according to the paper published in JAMA Psychiatry.
“The best thing women of child-bearing age can do is to take folic acid supplements daily,” Roffman said. “For women who don’t take supplements, exposure to fortified foods may provide some protection.”
In 1996, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration called for grain products such as enriched bread, flour, corn meal, rice and pasta to be fortified with folic acid by 1998. The aim was to reduce the risk of spinal defects like spina bifida.
But this is the first time researchers have looked at the effects of folic acid on the mental health of developing babies.
Roffman said those effects haven’t been tested for other mental illnesses such as depression or anxiety, but that there is a “possibility that there’s some common biological pathway that each of these disorders could be reflecting.”
This type of research is a crucial tool in funding procurement for mental health prevention and treatment, said Danna Mauch, president and chief executive officer of the Massachusetts Association for Mental Health.
Massachusetts currently has a Prevention and Wellness Trust Fund before the conference committee and state Legislature, and Mauch plans to use these findings to advocate for more dollars toward mental health. “One of the challenges in persuading legislators, government executives, foundations to invest is having good data that proves those investments will pay off,” Mauch said. “This research couldn’t be more important.”