Katie P. Kilker Is Knowing Half the Battle? An Examination of the Relationship between Folic Acid Knowledge and Awareness and Daily Supplementation with Folic Acid among 18 to 24 year old Women Who are Not Contemplating Pregnancy (Under the direction of Russ Toal, Associate Professor) Neural tube defects (NTDs) are serious birth defects that affect 3,000 pregnancies in the United States annuall...

UNLABELLED Scientific literature is increasingly reporting on dietary deficiencies in many populations of some nutrients critical for foetal and infant brain development and function. PURPOSE To highlight the potential benefits of maternal supplementation with docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and other important complimentary nutrients, including vitamin D, folic acid and iodine during pregnancy an...

Uteroplacental ischemia may cause preterm birth, either due to preterm labor, preterm premature rupture of membranes, or medical indication (in the presence of preeclampsia or fetal growth restriction). Uteroplacental ischemia is the product of defective deep placentation, a failure of invasion, and transformation of the spiral arteries by the trophoblast. The failure of normal placentation gen...

Aim: Many studies have implicated oxidative stress in the pathogenesis of infertility causing diseases of the female reproductive tract. The aim of this study was to review the current literature on the effects of antioxidant therapy and to elucidate whether antioxidant supplementation is useful to prevent and/or treat infertility and poor pregnancy outcomes related to various obstetric and gyn...

AIM To test the hypothesis that maternal docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) supplementation during pregnancy enhances maturation of the visual evoked potential (VEP) in healthy term infants. METHODS One hundred women were supplemented with either fish oil capsules rich in DHA (n = 50) or placebo capsules (n = 50) from week 15 of pregnancy until delivery. Total fatty acids in red blood cells and plasm...

Fish oil supplementation during pregnancy has been tested in several trials, with small positive effects on length of gestation; there have been no beneficial or harmful effects on cognitive development or growth of infants as a result of fish oil supplementation in pregnancy. The strongest evidence for good developmental outcomes for infants supports breastfeeding for at least six months. Pret...

Methods: The Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study is a population-based prospective cohort study. A total of 65,668 women with singleton pregnancies resulting in live births in 1999–2009 were included. Folic acid supplementation was self-reported from 26 weeks before pregnancy until week 24 during pregnancy. At gestational week 22, the women completed a food frequency questionnaire, which al...

BACKGROUND AND AIM Maternal morbidity and mortality statistics remain unacceptably high in Malawi. Prominent among the risk factors in the country is anaemia in pregnancy, which generally results from nutritional inadequacy (particularly iron deficiency) and malaria, among other factors. This warrants concerted efforts to increase iron intake among reproductive-age women. This study, among wome...

BACKGROUND Observational studies associate higher intakes of n-3 (omega-3) long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPUFAs) during pregnancy with higher gestation duration and birth size. The results of randomized supplementation trials using various n-3 LCPUFA sources and amounts are mixed. OBJECTIVE We tested the hypothesis that 600 mg/d of the n-3 LCPUFA docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) can incr...

Among women with adequate calcium intakes, finther increases in dietary or supplemental calcium do not alter the homeostatic response in calcium metabolism during pregnancy. Less is known about women consuming low calcium intakes and the influence of parity on calcium metabolism among women with low intakes. In this study we compared bone and renal indices of calcium homeostasis and response to...