Vitamin D During Pregnancy Linked To Stronger Baby Bones
Posted on: Friday, 17 April 2009, 15:15 CDT
A new study suggests that women who get sun during the last trimester of pregnancy may have children with stronger bones.
U.K. researchers found that among the 7,000 10-year-olds that were a part of the study, the ones that had mothers who were in their last trimester during sunny months tended to have larger bones.
The researchers say that the connection is presumably explained by vitamin D, which is synthesized in the skin after sun exposure and plays a key role in bone health.
The researchers reported in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, that it is possible that mothers' vitamin D levels late in pregnancy have lasting effects on their children's later bone development.
No one is saying that pregnant women should bask in the sun, because too much UV exposure is known to cause skin cancer.
However, researchers Adrian Sayers and Jonathan H. Tobias of the University of Bristol wrote that the findings do offer "further justification for strategies intended to improve maternal vitamin D status to optimize skeletal health the child."
The main food sources of vitamin D are milk and breakfast cereals. There are few foods that naturally contain vitamin D, though some fish contain substantial amounts.
The official recommendation for vitamin D during pregnancy currently is to take 200 IU per day, but researchers are trying to determine still what the optimal to take is. There has been a number of studies that suggested that vitamin D deficiency is common in pregnant women.
The researchers used local meteorological data to estimate the mothers' UV exposure during their last trimester.
The study found that children whose mothers had greater sun exposure tended to have larger ones then the ones whose mothers had less sun exposure.
Having bone mass acquired in early life is important to help fracture risk in later years. Sayers and Tobias said that if the benefits seen in this study persist into adulthood, mothers' vitamin D levels during pregnancy might affect their children's bone health into old age.
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Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports
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