Folic acid supplements pushed

Amazing what a difference one little vitamin can make — for good or ill.

The Utah Department of Health is trying to get women of child-bearing age to understand that by taking regular doses of folic acid before conception and after they become pregnant, they can decrease their risk for birth defects, including spina bifida, anencephaly and cleft palate.

Amy Nance, program manager of the state's Birth Defect Network, said the number of births affected by neural tube defects dropped dramatically 20 years ago when scientists realized the benefits of taking folic acid, and women who planned to have children were encouraged to get regular doses. But in 1999, the rate of birth defects that could be prevented by taking the supplement began to rise again.

That year, the rate for such defects in Utah was 5.6 per 10,000 births. By 2008, the rate had increased to 8.2 per 10,000 births, meaning an additional 18 to 25 babies are born with those conditions, some of them fatal.

Because formation of the neural tube occurs between 15 and 30 days after conception, women who become pregnant need to be taking vitamins with adequate supplies of folic acid before they conceive. A new grant will allow Nance and her colleagues help educate women in Utah about the need for the supplements. The grant also will aid in the distribution of more than 14,000 bottles of multivitamins containing folic acid to mothers in the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program.

Utah's Latino population will be a particular focus of the education campaign. Hispanic babies are 1.5 to 2 times more likely than others in the United States to be born with a neural tube defect, and the Centers for Disease Control reports Hispanic mothers have the least knowledge about the need for folic acid.

"This project is the first step in building a sustainable intervention aimed at educating all Utah women in their childbearing years, to increase awareness of the critical importance of folic acid," said Nance. "Once women understand it and have the vitamins in hand, we're confident they will start taking them."

e-mail: carrie@desnews.com