Vitamins may aid babies’ birth weight
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
Extra vitamin supplements can reduce the risk of having an underweight or undersized baby, researchers reported Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The supplements did not, however, lower the likelihood of premature birth or losing the fetus before birth. The study, conducted in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, involved 8,468 pregnant women who received iron and folic acid supplements, both proven prenatal treatments. Half were given supplements containing vitamins C, E and a mix of B vitamins. The rest got placebos. The risk of having a low birth-weight baby dropped from 9.4% among the placebo recipients to 7.8% for the babies whose mothers took the vitamins.