Research paper

Omega-3 Fatty Acid Deficiency in Infants before Birth Identified Using a Randomized Trial of Maternal DHA Supplementation in Pregnancy

PLoS ONE

Jan 2014

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0083764

Citations: 73

Influential: 7

Interventional (Human) Studies

Study answer

What this study found

Maternal DHA supplementation reduced the risk of lower early language performance, but it did not clearly improve cognitive or motor outcomes at 18 months. Compared with placebo, the DHA group had lower odds of failure to achieve high language measures, including words understood at 14 months (OR 3.22, 95% CI 1.49-6.94, P = 0.002), words produced at 14 months (OR 2.61, 1.22-5.58, P = 0.009), words understood at 18 months (OR 2.77, 1.23-6.28, P = 0.01), and BSID-III receptive language at 18 months (OR 2.23, 1.08-4.60, P = 0.03). High visual acuity failure was also less common at 2 months (OR…

Study & population: Randomized placebo-controlled trial in healthy pregnant women in Vancouver, Canada with uncomplicated pregnancies, enrolled around 16 weeks gestation and followed through delivery.
Intervention: Maternal DHA supplementation was given as 400 mg/day DHA in algal oil triglycerides, taken orally in capsules from enrolment until delivery.
Key limitation: Follow-up was limited to 18 months, so longer-term developmental effects are unknown.

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Original abstract

Background DHA is accumulated in the central nervous system (CNS) before birth and is involved in early developmental processes, such as neurite outgrowth and gene expression. Objective To determine whether fetal DHA insufficiency occurs and constrai…