Women who plan to become pregnant are told they need enough folate to prevent birth defects, but new research suggests there could be serious risks in having far too much of the nutrient.
The researchers found that if a new mother has a very high level of folate right after giving birth—more than four times what is considered adequate—the risk that her child will develop an autism spectrum disorder doubles.
Further, very high levels of another vitamin, B12, are also potentially harmful, tripling the risk that a new mom's offspring will develop an autism spectrum disorder. If both levels are extremely high, the risk that a child develops the disorder increases 17.6 times.
There is no such thing as a home testing meter to monitor the levels of folates and B12 in your blood, the way there is for glucose. How would a mother know without running to the doctor every day?
takyon: Also at Johns Hopkins University, The Atlantic, CBS News, and the Baltimore Sun. There is no DOI, because these are preliminary findings that will be presented on May 13th at the International Meeting for Autism Research in Baltimore.
Related: Scotland to Debate Fortification of Flour With Folic Acid as UK Govt Delays
FDA Allows Fortification of Corn Masa Flour With Folic Acid
Related Stories
Scotland may mandate adding folic acid to flour in order to reduce birth defects, a change that would likely end up affecting bakeries across the entire United Kingdom:
Scotland is considering whether to add folic acid to flour as concern mounts that there could be an increase in birth defects while the Westminster government delays a decision. Any move by Scotland could lead to folic acid being added to flour-based products UK-wide, as this would be the easiest solution for commercial bakers.
Folic acid plays a crucial role in preventing neural tube defects such as spina bifida. But 85% of women don't take enough.
Government advisers have recommended adding folic acid to flour for 16 years but the Department of Health says it is still "considering the matter". In the meantime, some food manufacturers have reduced the amount of folic acid they add to other foods, such as cereals, in anticipation of the fortification of flour. Experts say that this means children are at higher risk of birth defects.
The Scottish government says it would have preferred a UK-wide approach but has grown increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress. It is particularly concerned as unplanned pregnancies are more common in deprived communities. Public Health Minister Maureen Watt said: "The Scottish government has been convinced of the case for mandatory fortification for some time. Folate levels are a concern across the UK, but particularly so in Scotland and Northern Ireland. We are disappointed that, despite repeated lobbying from a number of sources, there has been no progress at UK level on mandatory fortification of flour with folic acid.
Here's an editorial in favor of fortifying flour.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will allow the voluntary fortification of corn masa flour with folic acid, which could reduce the occurrence of neural tube birth defects:
Foods made with corn masa flour — like tortillas, tacos and tamales — could soon play a critical role in the health of babies born to Latina mothers in the U.S. That's because, as of today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is now allowing manufacturers to fortify their corn masa foods with folic acid. That's a synthetic form of folate, a B vitamin that helps prevent severe defects of the brain and spinal cord when consumed by women early in pregnancy. "I think it will be really monumental for the Latino population," says Michael Dunn, a Brigham Young University food scientist.
Since 1988, the FDA has required that breads, pasta, breakfast cereals and other grains made with enriched flour be fortified with folic acid. In the years since, the number of babies born in the U.S. with neural tube defects has dropped by roughly 35 percent — or about 1,300 babies a year. But these birth defects remain "stubbornly higher" in the Hispanic community, says Dr. Edward McCabe, the chief medical officer at the March of Dimes. Researchers have suspected that the reason why might lie in tortillas and other foods made with corn masa flour – a dietary staple for many Hispanic families.
That's because until now, the FDA had banned fortification of products made with corn masa flour. The agency was concerned that the folic acid might not remain stable. Dunn led a study that helped change the FDA's mind. His research involved lengthy testing in the lab – as well as tests at a local facility making corn masa flour in Utah. He and his team found that the heat and production process doesn't significantly change the quantity of folic acid in a fortified product through its shelf life.
The FDA now says that manufacturers may voluntarily add up to 0.7 milligrams of folic acid per pound of corn masa.
(Score: 3, Informative) by physicsmajor on Thursday May 12 2016, @06:20PM
Administer this two-question, yes/no survey:
1) Do you hold to a strict vegan diet?
2) Are you taking supplements of Vitamin B12, which contain >100% of the daily recommended value?
If the answer to #1 is no, they don't have low B12. If the answer to #2 is no, they don't have too much B12. If the answer to #2 is yes, they might have too much B12.
There's truly no need for any further monitoring in the vast majority of cases. Folate aside, B12 is one of those things your body does really well. If you eat anything close to a normal diet containing at least some meat, your B12 will not be low except for rare conditions like Crohn's disease flares or if you've had surgery to remove a significant amount of small bowel. Take horse-pill supplements of B12 Dr. Oz recommends, though, and yeah you might have too much on board.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Thursday May 12 2016, @06:40PM
Or one could just eat salad? ;-)
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @10:51PM
One does not simply eat salad! Don't you know that salad is nothing more than lettuce with perhaps some expensive hipster shit like kale mixed in served with a bland vinaigrette dressing?! Only vegans eat salad! Salad is unnatural and a communist plot to contaminate our precious bodily fluids! Die, vegan scum!
(Score: 3, Funny) by bitstream on Thursday May 12 2016, @11:18PM
Salad is something that grows outside of a computer. That horrible place with a blue sky and dirty soiled earth ;-)
Assuming salad contains kale and vinaigrette is like assuming the milk grows in the shop instead of coming from cows.. Some city kids actually do believe this. ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @12:08AM
Holy cow, milk growing in the shop? I guess this isn't the first time I've heard this. It still blows me away. I guess I at least have some reason to be glad that I grew up in flyover country!
Protips for salad that will turn the anti-vegan AC (me) on his head: include bacon++ or chicken. Scratch that. Include bacon++ and chicken! Don't forget plenty of cheese and the occasional hardboiled egg cut in half. Smother with bacon++ ranch. Oh, and plenty of kale. Spinach is another good green to add. They tell me seaweed is also good, but I haven't tried it yet except as nori in sushi. Avoid iceberg lettuce and favor green and red leaf lettuce.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Friday May 13 2016, @01:42AM
I think the story was something like "Why do one need cows when there's milk in the supermarket?".
There are probably people that thinks that electricity are generated by wall sockets. Those evil power plants can be destroyed ;)
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday May 13 2016, @06:50PM
So (bacon==3) then?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday May 13 2016, @01:54PM
When I suggested starting a vegetable garden to my wife, a New York City kid for nearly all her life, she looked at me with horror. "There could be germs and dirt on the vegetables!" "Bugs might crawl on the leaves!" "There might be harmful chemicals in the soil!" I grew kale anyway, harvested it, washed and dried it and bundled it with a rubber band. I put her in the car with the kale, drove her to the local supermarket, stood at the door, and passed the kale into and back out of the magic portal and asked her if she would eat it now. Then to seal the deal, I asked her to wait outside with our kale while I went inside and bought some; we went home for a side-by-side taste test, and ours left the store's in the dust.
City kids really do have no idea what goes into producing the food that comes out of the magic portal of the supermarket. They'd gasp with horror if you told them the fertilizer used to grow their veg contained urea, the same as your piss, and they'd probably vomit if they saw the slaughtering of the animals required to deliver that nicely wrapped cut of meat. But then, maybe that's not surprising when so many people shrink from opening their computers and looking inside for fear the whole thing will go up in flames or instantly disintegrate.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Saturday May 14 2016, @12:16AM
Obviously experience is something every parent should give their kids. So for city kids that's at least a week on a farm so that they get a clue and perhaps avoid future allergies. Then a tour at some electronic repairman.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Thursday May 12 2016, @07:07PM
It doesn't take rare conditions or bad nutrition. I had low b12 and folic acid for 3 years until I finally dropped a kidney stone.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @10:55PM
Low B12? Found another vegan! You're all communist lizard people here to contaminate our precious bodily fluids! God meant for people to eat meat and only meat! Kidney stones are what you get for eating unnatural things like lettuce and hipster kale!
Ok... I promise I'm done now.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by bitstream on Thursday May 12 2016, @06:24PM
It's just like Apple software where the designer thinks he knows what the client wants and forces one to whatever has been deemed right. And it fails badly when the designer don't have a flawless mind.
If hammers were made using soft materials. Far less people would injure themselves with one. But it would also be useless.
(Score: 3, Touché) by ikanreed on Thursday May 12 2016, @06:53PM
*Looks at post
*Looks at rubber mallet
*Looks at post
*Looks at rubber mallet.
Hmmmmmmmmmmm.
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Thursday May 12 2016, @08:04PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @01:49AM
*goes to look at porn*
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Thursday May 12 2016, @06:39PM
So this is interesting. Back in the early 1990s is when a lot of the info about folic acid and neural tube defects really started to hit the news, with the CDC publishing guidelines in 1992 and the FDA approving it as an additive for fortified foods by 1996. That's also around the same time that the "autism epidemic" started. It's going to be interesting to see the followup studies on this and where it leads.
I am not saying this is a smoking gun or anything, it's too early to tell from just this one study and it would be stupid to jump to conclusions based on just this study. We all saw where that can lead. Still, it's interesting timing.
(Score: 1) by magamo on Thursday May 12 2016, @07:46PM
It is highly doubtful that this is a smoking gun, since there's been quite a lot of research done that has found plenty of genetic pointers to Spectrum Disorders. One more link in the chain of information, one more factor for some of the conditions within the ASD umbrella perhaps, but a 100% every time smoking gun? Doubt it.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Thursday May 12 2016, @09:02PM
Oh certainly. I'm not trying to imply that it is, or that fixing excess folic acid, should it be found to contribute, would eliminate autism in akl together. No, what I am curious about is the correlation with the uptick in diagnosis and the awareness of folic acid's role in preventing neural tube issues. We know that diagnostic criteria also started changing around that time as well as public awareness of autism disorders, so it wouldn't be responsible for the entire increase by any means either. Still, it could (if, again, proven true) be part of it.
I do agree with others though, this is very premature to be running around shouting from the rooftops about. We know for certain that too little folic acid early in gestation causing neural tube issues. The last thing we need is to scare the general public into shying away from folic acid during pregnancy. I suspect if this paper's claims pan out, it turn out to be due to cases of accidental overdose (well if one vitamin is good for me and the baby, 5 should be better!), and/or due to a metabolic issue with certain women retaining excess folic acid while consuming "normal" amounts.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @11:50PM
You need a subject because this isn't Reddit. Begone, heathen.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday May 13 2016, @05:38AM
You need a subject because:
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Friday May 13 2016, @02:41PM
Do I really need to explain why in those lists, a meaningful title is useful?
Yes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @09:16AM
(Score: 2) by ledow on Friday May 13 2016, @05:50PM
I have spent years telling people that taking MORE vitamins than necessary isn't going to be good for you, especially in any significant excess. At best you're wasting money, at worst shit like this will start to come out.
It'll be years before we know whether or not it's an actual genuine effect, but I doubt it will ever be the last thing linked to people doing in excess what they are told is "healthy" for them.
Like the advice to avoid nuts in pregnancy - so much bollocks that's actually caused more problems than it solves when women COMPLETELY REMOVE nuts from their diet in the run-up to birth and for years after because they're so worried about their child.
Eat normal. Missing something? Top it back up. Don't gorge on healthy shit - including medicines - any more than you'd starve yourself of them.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Friday May 13 2016, @07:36PM
Yea there is this "well they are natural so they can't hurt me!" mindset. Then there is the anti-pharma alternative medicine bullshit, much of it pushed by supplement companies and snake oil salesmen that are raking in billions selling useless or even harmful supplements to the general public, all the while portraying themselves as some sort of underdogs fighting for your health and freedom! Frustrating.
There are already studies showing that some antioxidants taken in excess of dietary needs not only don't prevent illness but may actually increase the risk of developing certain cancers. Other long term studies are showing no health benefit from vitamin supplementation on health adults, with at least one showing an increase in the overall death rate in participants that take daily vitamins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @08:12PM
It's really annoying that none of these vitamin studies are done on sickly adults. Of course if you're healthy they're not going to do much because your body already has everything it needs.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @06:44PM
I'm sure noted scientist Jenny McCarthy would know.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by rigrig on Thursday May 12 2016, @06:45PM
So preliminary findings suggest there could be serious risks in having far too much of <something>.
I'm a bit disappointed with this kind of scientific "news" making it onto SN.
Even linked page on the Atlantic [theatlantic.com] is (now) titled
Concerns About Folate Causing Autism Are Premature
Yesterday’s press release was potentially dangerous.
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 12 2016, @06:48PM
There's no way this shouldn't be reported even if only due to the fAilure of the media. And I put preliminary everywhere
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @11:45PM
It seems like autism is something that's truly rooted itself in people's mind as a curse to be fearful of. We keep trying to find the cause, and it keeps eluding us.
Autism wasn't so big when Wolves of the Calla [wikipedia.org] came out, but I suppose a strange disease that affects children is one of those old, primitive fears. I think of the word roont [urbandictionary.com] when considering autism and its impact on the developed world.
The Zika virus seems to hold a similar portent the way that even Ebola couldn't. It's interesting how humans respond to different diseases. Attitudes about GRID¹/AIDS gradually changed as people began to realize that GRID didn't have much to do with being gay. There's no getting away, though, from something like autism or Zika that affects little children. Observe the power of the curse that can pierce the innocence of a child!
¹ Gay-related immune deficiency
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Friday May 13 2016, @01:37AM
The Zika virus seems to hold a similar portent the way that even Ebola couldn't. It's interesting how humans respond to different diseases.
Zika will be "big" because it is an excuse for the Federal government to funnel large sums of cash to southern states.
(Score: 3, Funny) by choose another one on Friday May 13 2016, @08:16AM
Is Panama a southern state these days ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @08:40PM
To Colombians it was a northern department, you insensitive clod!
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday May 15 2016, @02:09AM
Not yet, but I'm sure there are plenty of kickbacks and graft to go around.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @07:11PM
The data:
"For the study, researchers analyzed data from 1,391 mother-child pairs in the Boston Birth Cohort, a predominantly low-income minority population.
The mothers were recruited at the time of their child’s birth between 1998 and 2013 and followed for several years, with the mother’s blood folate levels checked once within the first one to three days of delivery. The researchers found that one in 10 of the women had what is considered an excess amount of folate (more than 59 nanomoles per liter) and six percent had an excess amount of vitamin B12 (more than 600 picomoles per liter)."
"A large majority of the mothers in the study reported having taken multivitamins – which would include folic acid and vitamin B12 – throughout pregnancy."
The suggestion:
"The researchers found that if a new mother has a very high level of folate right after giving birth – more than four times what is considered adequate – the risk that her child will develop an autism spectrum disorder doubles. Very high vitamin B12 levels in new moms are also potentially harmful, tripling the risk that her offspring will develop an autism spectrum disorder. If both levels are extremely high, the risk that a child develops the disorder increases 17.6 times."
On why the problem wasn't uniform: " It could be that they consumed too many folic acid-fortified foods or took too many supplements. Or, they say, it could be that some women are genetically predisposed to absorbing greater quantities of folate or metabolizing it slower, leading to the excess. Or it could be a combination of the two."
The conclusion:
“This research suggests that this could be the case of too much of a good thing,” says study lead author Ramkripa Raghavan, MPH, MSc, a DrPH candidate in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health at the Bloomberg School. “We tell women to be sure to get folate early in pregnancy. What we need to figure out now is whether there should be additional recommendations about just what an optimal dose is throughout pregnancy.”
The backers:
"This study is part of an ongoing prospective birth cohort study on early life determinants of autism in the Boston Birth Cohort, co-led by Fallin and Wang, MD, MPH, ScD, Zanvyl Krieger Professor, Director, Center on the Early Life Origins of Disease at Bloomberg School, and is supported by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (R40MC27443). Raghavan is supported by a student research grant from the Wendy Klag Center for Autism and Developmental Disorders; the Bloomberg School and the John and Alice Chenoweth-Pate Fellowship."
John and Alice Chenoweth-Pate Fellowship is a graduate female child development scholarship from John Hopkins University. The Wendy Klag Center for Autism and Developmental Disorders and Bloomberg School are also John Hopkins related.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @08:14PM
armchair wikipedia scientists sayz:
B12 is rather rare. Some places have to deposit "cobalt-bombs" that grazing animals will eat then poop out then eat again
to be B12 sufficient.
Only bacteria can make B12.
Humans cannot make B12 but have to eat animals to get B12.
And as mentioned, animals need to eat their own poop AFTER eating the element cobalt to be a B12 source.
Also there's a radioactif cobalt version that is very nasty albeit with a short half-life ...
It seems there's also a "fake" factory made version of B12 that is awaiting more "funding" to be declared functional
in-vivo :)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @12:31AM
copy-paste from https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/204433119-Folic-Acid [soylent.com]
Ingredient name: Folic Acid
Empirical Formula: C19H19N7O6
Food and Drug Administration Daily Recommended Value: 400 ug
Quantity in one pouch of Soylent: 441 ug
Nutrition role:
The vitamin Folate is required in the synthesis of nucleosides, which are major components of DNA and RNA, the genetic material at the basis of all life.
Specifically, folate is used by cells to manufacture purine, the base structure of adenine and guanine - building blocks of DNA and RNA. Additionally, folate is an input in the creation of the enzyme thymidylate synthase, which is required in order to make thymine, another building block of DNA.[1] ,[2]
Because folate is used to manufacture genetic material, without it, cell division (which requires a duplicate to be made of existing DNA) would not be possible.[3]
Furthermore, folate contributes to the maintenance of several different amino acids in the body.[4] In one such example, folate is involved in single-carbon transfers of the methionine cycle. The methionine cycle serves to regenerate methionine, one of the 22 amino acids that are used as building blocks for the tens of thousands of types of proteins found within the body.[5]
Absorption:
Folic acid is absorbed via active transport in the small intestines (specifically in the jejunum[6] ). This process is less complex than that undergone by traditional food folates, which must be hydrolyzed to the monoglutamate form prior to absorption.[7]
Before entering the bloodstream, the monoglutamate form is then reduced to tetrahydrofolate (THF) in the liver. Roughly 50 percent of folate in the body is found in the liver, while 50 percent is in circulation. Studies estimate total body quantities of folate to be between 12 and 28 milligrams.[8]
Reason this form chosen:
Folic acid is the most stable form of folate and is also more bioavailable than traditional food folates (polyglutamate derivatives).[9]
(Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Friday May 13 2016, @05:47AM
So does reading Soylent News cause autism?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @06:05AM
It's more of a correlation. Autism causes SoylentNews readers.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Phoenix666 on Friday May 13 2016, @01:59PM
No, it just causes Wonkey_Monkey ;-)
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @01:40AM
Does that still cause autism?