Women Pregnancy

Taking multivitamins around the time of conception dramatically reduces a woman’s risk of preeclampsia, also known as toxemia, the leading reason of complication during pregnancy that can be lethal to a woman and her fetus, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh report. Children of mothers with preeclampsia are five times more likely to die during birth than if they were born to mothers without the condition, and it is cited for 15 percent of early births in the U.S. The only cure for the condition is giving birth. Previous pre-eclampsia studies have largely focused on vitamin use after the first trimester of pregnancy and have found little benefit.

Women who took multivitamins at least once a week three months before the start of pregnancy and three months after were decreases incidents of preeclampsia by 45 percent for women overall and by 72 percent for women who aren’t overweight, the study found. The paper is scheduled for publication in the Sept. 1 print issue of the journal.
“Our data show that women who are not overweight before pregnancy and who used multivitamins at least once a week before conception and in the first three months of pregnancy reduced their risk of preeclampsia by a striking 72 percent compared to those who didn’t take a multivitamin during this time period,” said Lisa Bodnar, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.D., assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH).

Preeclampsia already killed about 76,000 women and fetuses a year worldwide. In the United States, it occurs in about 8 percent of pregnancies and accounts for 15 percent of premature births. is more prevalent in the developing world, where it accounts for up to 80 percent of maternal deaths. And while treatment is more readily available in developed countries, preeclampsia remains the leading cause of maternal death. Infants born to mothers with preeclampsia have a risk of mortality five times greater than those born to women with normal pregnancies. In the United States alone, nearly 15 percent of preterm deliveries are a result of preeclampsia.

“Preeclampsia is a potentially devastating condition for mother and baby,” observed James M. Roberts, M.D., director of the Magee-Womens Research Institute and senior author of the paper. “It may be that taking a multivitamin prior to conception positively influences embryonic implantation, which is a physiologic process known to be abnormal in preeclampsia. More study is needed to clarify these findings.”
Researchers are unsure of the reasons why multivitamin use appears to have no benefit to preeclampsia risk in overweight women, Dr. Bodnar said. “It may be that typical multivitamins, which contain low nutrient doses, may not be adequate to overcome the metabolic challenges associated with the development of preeclampsia along with being overweight and pregnant,” she added. “But again, more study is needed to test these ideas.”