ISLAMABAD – The women of childbearing age who double the amount of folic acid in their blood require food fortification of flour and other grains with vitamin-B to help reduce birth defects, health officials say. Officials at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention expect the payoff will be fewer spinal and brain defects. “We’re talking about a simple intervention here that can prevent up to half of those birth defects,” said Dr David Fleming, CDC deputy director for science and public health. “We are very confident.”
Since 1998, food manufacturers have been required to fortify pasta, cereals, rice and other grain products with folic acid, a B vitamin that has been shown in previous studies to reduce spinal and brain defects.
The recent CDC study showed that women ages 15 to 44 averaged more than double the amount of folic acid in their blood compared with women in a similar study conducted between 1988 and 1994.
Researchers found blood levels of folic acid increased on average from 6.3 to 16.2 nanograms per milliliter. A nanogram is one billionth of a gram.
Folic acid is found naturally in citrus fruit, beans, tuna, eggs and leafy green vegetables like spinach. Before pastas and other cereals were fortified, doctors urged pregnant women to take vitamin supplements as well. The problem, researchers say, is that folates are most beneficial very early in pregnancy – before many women know they are pregnant.
The CDC has not released any data showing an actual decline in birth defects since the 1998 food mandate, but studies earlier this year in South Carolina and Texas showed reductions when pregnant women increased their folic acid intake.
“It might be a year or two or three before we’re able to come forward and say here’s the final proof,” Fleming said.
Dr Donald Mattoon, medical director for the March of Dimes, called the CDC study an important step that does suggest that food fortification may have had an impact.” But he cautioned that the CDC’s research does not look at whether folate levels vary among different ethnic and socio-economic groups.
Overweight can impair blood flow: People who are overweight may have impaired blood flow that can increase their risk of heart disease. Now, a team of Italian researchers reports that an abundance of free radicals – naturally occurring compounds that damage cells and lead to disease – may be partly to blame.
Dr Francesco Perticone, from the University of Catanzaro Magna Graecia in Catanzaro, Italy, and colleagues tested blood vessel response in 76 healthy people. The investigators found that obese people, individuals who tended to gain weight around their abdomen, and those who did not respond normally to insulin had impaired blood flow compared with normal-weight people. Insulin is the hormone that regulates blood sugar. People with type 2 diabetes do not respond normally to insulin, which results in high levels of glucose (sugar) in their blood.
When the obese participants were given vitamin C, their blood vessels widened, improving blood flow, according to the report in the January issue of Diabetes, a journal of the American Diabetes Association.
Previous research has found that antioxidant vitamins such as C and E may help arteries dilate and keep blood flowing smoothly. Antioxidants blunt the effects of free radicals.
The new study “reinforces the hypothesis” that damage caused by free radicals may be considered an important mechanism behind blood vessel problems in obesity, Perticone and colleagues explain.
The authors note, however, that there is no evidence that vitamin C actually lowers heart disease risk.
