Do We Need Another Randomized Controlled Trial of Folic Acid Alone?

As a public health strategy to help prevent neural tube defect-affected pregnancies, enriched flour and pasta in the United States and Canada are being fortified with folic acid, and women are being advised to take supplementary folic acid around the time of pregnancy to ensure an adequate intake. B...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.) Mass.), 2001-03, Vol.12 (2), p.262-265
Main Authors: Turner, Linda A., Morrison, Howard, Prabhakaran, Victor M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Biological and medical sciences
Calcium
Capsules
Commentaries
Congenital Abnormalities - prevention & control
Dietary Supplements
Dosage
Experimentation
Female
Folic Acid - therapeutic use
Humans
Medical sciences
Neural tube defects
Neural Tube Defects - prevention & control
Pregnancy
Prevention and actions
Protective effects
Public health. Hygiene
Public health. Hygiene-occupational medicine
Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic - standards
Specific populations (family, woman, child, elderly...)
Vitamin A
Vitamins
Zinc
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:As a public health strategy to help prevent neural tube defect-affected pregnancies, enriched flour and pasta in the United States and Canada are being fortified with folic acid, and women are being advised to take supplementary folic acid around the time of pregnancy to ensure an adequate intake. But in spite of the recently published results of a public health campaign in China, the burden of proof that folic acid alone is responsible for a decreased risk of these birth defects rests on the results of a randomized controlled trial conducted by the Medical Research Council of the United Kingdom. Supporting evidence comes primarily from studies that have shown a protective effect of multivitamins containing folic acid as one of many nutrients. Based on a striking and potentially hazardous type of non-compliance observed in an earlier study in which a participant took multiple vitamin doses simultaneously and a suggestion of similar incidents in the Medical Research Council study, we conclude that a further randomized controlled trial of the protective effect of folic acid alone may be necessary.
ISSN:1044-3983
1531-5487
DOI:10.1097/00001648-200103000-00022