Prenatal Folic Acid Lowers Risk for Language Delay

Knowledge of the protective effect of folic acid against neural tube defects has led to concerted public health campaigns to promote folic acid supplementation. Despite these efforts, periconceptional supplementation rates remain suboptimal in the U.S. To examine whether folic acid has other benefits in neurodevelopment, investigators in Norway — a country that does not fortify foods with folic acid — prospectively evaluated the association between maternal report of folic acid supplementation early in pregnancy and language delay in nearly 39,000 offspring. Severe language delay (defined as limitation to 1-word or unintelligible utterances at age 3 years) was measured by maternal report on a validated language grammar rating scale.

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