Moms' prenatal vitamins cut childhood cancers

Women who take multivitamins before and during pregnancy apparently reduce the chances that their offspring will develop certain types of childhood tumors, researchers report.

Dr. G. Koren, from the University of Toronto, and colleagues conducted a systematic review of numerous studies and found that taking a multivitamin before and in early pregnancy reduced the risk of childhood leukemia by 36 percent.

Prenatal vitamin supplementation was also associated with a 47 percent reduced risk of neuroblastoma, a malignant tumor arising in nerve tissue, and a 27 percent decreased risk of childhood brain tumors.

"Based on these data, one can estimate that maternal multivitamin supplementation may prevent 900 cases of pediatric leukemia and 300-400 cases of pediatric brain tumors annually in the United States," the investigators write in the journal Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics.

Koren's team suspects that folic-acid containing multivitamins in particular are behind the decrease in these childhood cancers, but "the available data do not allow determination of which of the constituent(s) may cause these protective effects."

Nonetheless, they conclude: "Given that women who are considering pregnancy are generally advised to supplement with folic acid, the results from this study suggest that supplementation with a folic acid-containing multivitamin may be a preferred method."

source : news.yahoo.com