THURSDAY, July 25, 2002 (HealthDayNews) --
Zinc supplements taken by pregnant women in developing countries could cause impaired mental development in their children, new research says.
The study, in this week's issue of The Lancet, examined the mental development of 168 13-month-old infants in Bangladesh whose mothers received either 30 milligrams per day of zinc or a placebo during pregnancy.
While there was no significant difference in the growth or behavior of the two groups of the children, the infants in the placebo group had higher mental and psychomotor development scores, the study says.
The study was done jointly by the Institute for Child Health in London and the International Center for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh.
Zinc deficiency is common in people who live in developing countries because their diets are low in animal protein and high in fiber. A previous study showed zinc supplements given to pregnant women in Bangladesh improved infant growth and made them less susceptible to infectious diseases.
"Since zinc supplementation in infants has a beneficial effect on growth and morbidity, and supplementation of mothers was associated with reduced morbidity in low birthweight infants in this study, our findings complicate policymaking. Undernourished pregnant women obviously require more than zinc alone," says a prepared statement by one of the study authors, Sally Grantham McGregor of the Institute for Child Health.
"The next step would be to examine the effect of more comprehensive supplementations to improve maternal nutritional status during pregnancy on a broad range of outcomes, including infants' development," she adds.
More information
For more insight into zinc as a dietary supplement, the National Institutes of Health offers this fact sheet.
