Folate, often called folic acid, is crucial for fetal development, but new findings indicate that too much may be detrimental as well.
Conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, the study has found that the children of new mothers with too much folate and vitamin B12 in their blood streams post-birth had much higher chances of developing an autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
A May 11 press release noted that the results indicated that more than four times the “adequate” amount (between 13.5 and 45.3 nanomoles per liter) of folate doubled the child’s risk. Very high levels of vitamin B12 tripled the risk.
If the mother had extremely high levels of both, the child’s risk of being diagnosed with an ASD increases 17.6 times.
ASD is a developmental condition characterized by social impairment, abnormal communication, and repetitive or unusual behavior.
Usually recognizable in the first two years of life, ASD affects one in 68 children in the United States. Boys are five times more likely than girls to have it.
While these new findings may be alarming, folate, or its synthetic version, folic acid, is still essential to a fetus’s neurodevelopment. In the early stages of pregnancy, folate promotes correct neurological cell growth.
Folic acid deficiencies have been shown to cause neural tube birth defects, such as spina bifida and anencephaly.
