This supplement is certainly a baby boost.
While prenatal vitamins aren’t a replacement for a balanced diet for expecting mothers, they can fill potential nutritional gaps and provide additional benefits.
A nutritional supplement found in a common food could support fetal brain development, improving social behavior and cognitive performance in kids, even scoring higher on IQ tests, according to new research.
Found in everyday foods like chicken, eggs, beef and fish, choline plays a role in memory, mood, inflammation and cell health.
A new clinical trial from the University of Colorado found that children of mothers who received phosphatidylcholine supplements — a form of choline — had fewer problems with language development and social skills.
The kids of mothers who took the choline-based supplement had fewer social withdrawal behaviors, including some often seen in Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Four-year-olds of mothers who took high doses scored about 8 points higher on an IQ-style test than those who took a placebo, with many also testing in a range used for gifted program placement.
In the largest randomized clinical trial of prenatal choline supplementation ever conducted, researchers looked at more than 200 pregnant women who took 9,000 milligrams of phosphatidylcholine.
The rest of the participants took a placebo, and both groups took their supplements from 16 weeks of pregnancy until delivery.
Neither the women nor the researchers knew who received which one until the end of the study.
The children’s behavior was then assessed starting at 18 months and up to 4 years of age, with cognitive performance measured at ages 3 and 4.
By the time the children were four, only 4% in the supplement group showed multiple or lasting social withdrawal problems, compared to 24% of children whose mothers took the placebo.
Social withdrawal behaviors included limited interest in other people, withdrawing from social activities and reduced eye contact.
The researchers also noted significantly fewer children in the supplement group with behavioral profiles and language difficulties often associated with autism.
However, attention problems didn’t show any notable improvements. Meanwhile, around one-third of participants dropped out before the final assessments.
Still, the study authors write that the findings show “safe, effective support of fetal brain development” from choline supplementation.
The results could impact how doctors discuss the prenatal supplements with pregnant patients who may be curious about over-the-counter options.
“This study provides additional evidence that choline supplements during pregnancy can have lasting effects on children’s brain development,” senior author Robert Freedman said in a press release.
Choline works for brain development by activating a receptor made by the CHRNA7 gene in developing nerve cells that helps them create the machinery to receive signals from other nerve cells before birth.
Many mothers, though, “don’t get enough choline in their diets to fully give the baby all that it needs to complete the activation of its neurons,” according to Freedman.
It’s also nearly impossible to get enough choline in a normal diet to fully activate the CHRNA7 receptor, making supplementation necessary.
The researchers also believe the dosage in the study was a bit higher than needed, recommending 7,200 mg of phosphatidylcholine or 900 mg of choline itself, instead.
