THURSDAY, Oct. 30, 2003 (HealthDayNews) -- A worldwide epidemic of birth defects could be prevented by fortifying flour and grains with folic acid.
That's the claim of a Canadian study in the current issue of Birth Defects Research (Part A): Clinical and Molecular Teratology.
The study calls the continuing global epidemic of spina bifida and anencephaly that affects more than 200,000 newborns each year a tragic failure of global health policy.
The study found the rate of neural tube defects in Canada was reduced by 32 percent after the federal government mandated that flour be fortified with folic acid.
In addition, mandatory fortification of flour with folic acid in Canada and the United States reduced concentrations of homocysteine in adults and could have prevented up to 25 percent of heart attacks and strokes that occurred before the folic acid requirement, the study says.
Even with flour fortification, the study suggests the rate of neural tube defects in North America is about twice what it should be.
In the same issue of the journal, a commentary by Dr. Godfrey Oakley of Emory University School of Public Health notes that while fortification with folic acid has reduced the rate of neural tube defects in North America, more needs to be done.
Each year, hundreds of women have children with serious birth defects or have to have their pregnancies terminated, something that could be avoided if the Canadian and American governments required a higher concentration of folic acid in enriched grains, Oakley says in the commentary.
And countries that don't require any fortification are missing a great opportunity for preventing birth defects.
"A single day's delay in requiring fortification in any country means that women will unnecessarily have miscarriages, that babies will unnecessarily have serious birth defects and that many more adults are likely to die unnecessarily from heart attacks and strokes," Oakley writes.
More information
Here's where you can learn more about folic acid.
