Women's Health - November 2004

Folic Acid Use By Pregnant Women On The Rise

Forty percent of American women of childbearing age now get enough folic acid to help prevent birth defects, according to a new March of Dimes Gallup survey published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).

The MMWR is a publication of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

That is a record proportion of women, up from 32 percent in last year's survey. While it is still far from the majority of women, it is heartening progress, March of Dimes officials say.

"We're still only at 40 percent, but that's a lot better [than in past years]," says Dr. Siobhan Dolan, associate medical director for the organization. "That's a big jump. Eight percent is a big and very exciting jump."

Folic Acid Prevents Some Birth Defects

For years, the March of Dimes, as well as the CDC and other national organizations, have urged women who could become pregnant to be sure they get at least 400 micrograms of folic acid every day to prevent birth defects. This is the amount found in most multivitamins.

Folic acid is a nutrient found in some green, leafy vegetables, most berries, nuts, beans, citrus fruits, fortified breakfast cereals, and some vitamin supplements. Folic acid, a B vitamin, is sometimes called folate.

If women get adequate amounts of folic acid before pregnancy, it can reduce the risk of giving birth to children with neural tube defects, such as spina bifida, a defect in the spine, or anencephaly, a brain defect, according to the CDC.

Every year in the US, about 3,000 babies are born with neural tube defects, according to the March of Dimes.

Pollsters asked a national sample of 2,012 women ages 18 to 45 about their vitamin use, why they did or did not take folic acid, and about their awareness of the importance of folic acid to prevent birth defects, among other questions.

Seventy-seven percent of the women said they were aware of folic acid, compared to just 52 percent when the same survey was done in 1995.

While 40 percent of women now take folic acid daily in the form of multivitamins, just 28 percent did in 1995 and 32 percent did in 2003.

"In 1995, 4 percent of women knew folic acid helps prevent birth defects," Dr. Dolan comments. "But in 2004, 24 percent know that."

Women Notice Nutrients in Their Diets

The low-carb diet craze may have actually helped, Dr. Dolan notes.

"We had concerns that low-carb diets might put women in a position where they didn't benefit from fortification in the food supply," she says, referring to low-carb dieters' habit of cutting down on or eliminating breads and other carbohydrate-rich foods.

But it appears that women on low-carb diets may have paid more attention to their folic acid needs. In the new survey, 49 percent of women who said they had been on a low-carb diet in the past six months said they took a multivitamin every day with folic acid.

Always consult your physician for more information.