Children born to mothers with low vitamin B12 intake during pregnancy have an increased risk of having speech difficulties and math deficiencies.
- Vitamin B12 is mainly found in foods of animal origin: offal, seafood, meat, fish, eggs and dairy products.
- Children born to women with the lowest vitamin B12 intake have an increased risk of poor vocabulary at 24 months, reduced ability to combine words at 38 months, and poor speech intelligibility at six years.
- They also show poor understanding of mathematics in school between the ages of 4 and 6 and poor results in national mathematics tests at age 13.
Consuming enough vitamin B12 during pregnancy is important for the future development of the child. In a study published on December 5 in the journal Nutrition Research, researchers at the University of Bristol have found that babies of pregnant women who are deficient in vitamin B12 have an increased risk of adverse development specific to certain speech and math skills. Vitamin B12 is mainly found in foods of animal origin: offal, seafood, meat, fish, eggs and dairy products. It is also found in some fortified breakfast cereals.
26 out of 29 different tests based on vitamin B12 intake
For the study, the researchers used data from the Children of the 90s long-term health study which follows children born between 1991 and 1992. This provides information on the dietary details of nearly 14,000 pregnant women. Their children were followed over the years and their abilities tested at different times. The latest data presented in this study report the results of comparing children born to women who ate a diet relatively low in vitamin B12 with children whose mothers ate a diet higher in vitamin B12.
The researchers compared 29 different test results of which 26 were found to be different with vitamin B12 levels. “A much higher amount than one would have expectedobserved Jean Golding, author of the study. Many nutrients during pregnancy have beneficial effects on the brain of the unborn child, resulting in improved childhood abilities with respect to intelligence and educational abilities. However, it is not known if vitamin B12 has a similar effect..”
Problems in mathematical reasoning
Mothers who eat a diet low in vitamin B12 differ from the rest of the population by 9 different independent characteristics, the researchers found. While many differences such as reading and spelling skills, as well as aspects of IQ could be explained by other background factors, there are six associations that could not be explained. These suggest that children born to women with the lowest vitamin B12 intake have an increased risk of poor vocabulary at 24 months, reduced ability to combine words at 38 months, poor speech intelligibility at six years, poor understanding of mathematics at school between the ages of 4 and 6; and poor performance in national mathematics tests at age 13. The researchers did not find a significant association with mental arithmetic, indicating that math scores are specific to a reasoning component rather than computational abilities.
“We concluded that if a pregnant woman has a low vitamin B12 intake, there may be adverse effects on the child’s neurocognitive development in relation to certain speech and math skills.Professor Golding concluded. These results are intriguing but need to be confirmed in other longitudinal studies. In the meantime, it is still appropriate to recommend a varied diet for all pregnant women, and for those who eat little or no animal products, the inclusion of fortified foods and/or yeast extract should to be encouraged.”
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