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Modifying Levels of Maternal Dietary Folic Acid or Choline to Study the Impact of Deficiencies on Offspring Health Outcomes
03:19

Modifying Levels of Maternal Dietary Folic Acid or Choline to Study the Impact of Deficiencies on Offspring Health Outcomes

Published on: June 28, 2024

Association of microtia with maternal obesity and periconceptional folic acid use

Chen Ma1, Suzan L Carmichael, Angela E Scheuerle

  • 1California Research Division, March of Dimes Foundation, Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, 5700 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way, Oakland, CA 94609, USA. cma@marchofdimes.com

American Journal of Medical Genetics. Part A
|October 16, 2010
PubMed

The study objective was to examine the association of microtia with maternal intake of folic-acid-containing supplements and obesity. The study data included deliveries from 1997 to 2005 from the National Birth Defects Prevention Study. Non-syndromic cases of microtia were compared to non-malformed, population-based liveborn control infants, by estimating adjusted odds ratios (AORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) from logistic regression models that included maternal race/ethnicity, education, and study site. Maternal obesity was only weakly associated with microtia. Maternal periconceptional intake of folic-acid-containing vitamin supplements reduced the risk for microtia, but only among non-obese women (OR: 0.63; 95% CI: 0.44-0.91). The reduced risk was stronger when analyses were restricted to isolated cases (OR: 0.51; 95% CI: 0.34-0.77), and it was independent of the level of maternal dietary folate intake. Adjusting for maternal race/ethnicity did not reveal alternative interpretations of this association. This analysis suggests that maternal periconceptional intake of folic-acid-containing supplements may provide protection from microtia for non-obese women.

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