Science / Medicine : Vitamin Findings Rejected

Vitamin supplements taken around the time of conception do not reduce the risk of having a baby with birth defects in the central nervous system, researchers said last week in a study that contradicts a number of previous findings.

Previous studies in Britain and the United States showed that mothers of malformed infants were less likely to have taken vitamins prior to or just after conception than mothers of normal children or infants with other defects. But critics have faulted the studies because of the small numbers of women involved or design problems.

In the new study, coordinated by the National Institutes of Health, researchers compared three groups: 571 women in California and Illinois who had a child with a defect of the neural tube, the primitive central nervous system of the developing fetus; 546 women who had a child with another defect, and 573 women who had a normal infant. All the women were interviewed about their use of vitamins within five months of giving birth or the diagnosis of a birth defect. The study found that the use of multivitamins did not differ among the three groups. It also found that the use of the vitamin folate, which had been shown to prevent birth defects, was the same for all the groups.