[Vitamin E status in mothers of children with cleft lip]

It had been suspected for many years that mother's periconceptional diet may have a role in the causation of birth defects. Over the past 10 years, many studies have reported that women who used multivitamins periconceptionally had a reduction in risk for offspring with orofacial cleft. This study was aimed to establish vitamin E status in Polish mothers of children with isolated cleft lip. 37 mothers of children with cleft lip (CL) and 67 women who gave birth to healthy children were studied. All participants were healthy women without symptoms of malabsorption. Levels of alpha-tocopherol in plasma and erythrocytes were determined by high-performance liquid chromatography. There was no differences between mean plasma alpha-tocopherol level in mothers of children with birth defect and mothers of healthy children (17.81 +/- 4.81 micromol/l vs 19.44 +/- 5.01 micromol/l; p>0.05). It is believed that the ratio of alpha-tocopherol to total cholesterol is more useful as a measure of vitamin status than the a-tocopherol level alone. In mothers of children with CL plasma alpha-tocopherol to total serum cholesterol ratio was statistically lower compared to those in the control group (3.35 +/- 0.88 micromol/mmol vs 3.89 +/- 0.79 micromol/mmol; p<0.02). Ratio of alpha-tocopherol level in erythrocytes to total serum cholesterol was also lower in mothers of children with CL (0.38 +/- 0.06 micromol/mmol vs 0.48 +/- 0.10 micromol/mmol; p<0.05). Our results suggested that vitamin E may play a role in prevention of orofacial clefts.