If you're currently expecting and due to deliver during the year's colder months, experts have issued some advice which may prove beneficial to your unborn child.

Following a study which sought to examine the effect vitamin D has on an unborn child, researchers established that babies born during the winter months benefited if their mothers took vitamin D supplements while pregnant.

With the help of 1,134 women from Southampton, Oxford and Sheffield who were between 14 and 17 weeks pregnant, and had low to normal levels of vitamin D, researchers conducted a study which examined the theory that bone growth in the womb and during early infancy is linked to overall bone strength later in life.

Dividing the women into two groups, researchers gave half took a 25 microgram vitamin D capsule daily while the other half were given inactive placebo pills and ultimately established that there was no significant difference in bone mass between the babies born to each group of mothers.
 


However, further analysis established that babies born during the winter months benefited more if their mothers took vitamin D supplements while pregnant, with findings indicating that the bone mass of a winter baby whose mother ingested the supplement was higher than that of winter-born babies whose mothers received the placebo.

Commenting on the study's findings, Professor Nicholas Harvey of the University of Southampton explained: "Since sunlight is our most important source of vitamin D, mothers' levels of vitamin D tend to drop from summer to winter, and babies born in the winter months tend to have lower bone density than those born during the summer."

Elaborating further still, he continued: "The trial has given us the first evidence that supplementing mothers with vitamin D during pregnancy counteracts the seasonal drop in maternal vitamin D levels and may help to ensure good bone development in these winter births."

With current guidelines in the UK recommending pregnant women take daily supplements of 10 micrograms of vitamin D, Dr Benjamin Jacobs, consultant paediatrician at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in London, asserts: "Tthis study therefore needs to be taken into account when reviewing the current Vitamin D advice particularly for pregnant women in the UK and beyond."

The study has been published in the The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology journal.

 

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