Folic acid, known to be high in vitamin B, plays an important role in preventing birth defects in children such as spina bifida.
And now a study, recently published in the US, has shown that folic acid plays an added useful role. It has discovered that women who take folic acid supplements for a minimum of a year before they conceive are, as a result, less likely to give birth prematurely.
The study which followed approximately 35,000 pregnant women between 1999 and 2002 found that those women who took folic acid for at least a year before pregnancy reduced the risk of having their babies prematurely by about 70%, compared with women who hadn’t taken the supplement.
