Abstract
Background Folic acid supplementation is universally recommended for women of child-bearing age to prevent fetal neural tube defects (NTDs). Concerns have arisen over the potential risk for childhood allergy and asthma due to folic acid supplementation. We examined whether periconceptional supplementation with low-dose folic acid only was associated with an increased risk for allergy symptoms or asthma in offspring at 4–6 years of age.
Methods Out of 247 831 participating women enrolled in 1993–1996, 9090 were randomly selected and their children were followed up in 2000–2001. Information on mothers' demographic characteristics, folic acid supplementation and allergic diseases among children was collected. We used logistic regression to evaluate the association between folic acid intake and risk for allergic disease while adjusting for potential confounding factors.
Results The rate of allergy symptoms was 1.54% among children whose mothers had taken folic acid compared with 2.04% among those whose mothers had not taken folic acid, and the rate of asthma was 0.92% and 0.88%, respectively. Maternal folic acid supplementation was not associated with risk for allergy symptoms or asthma, with odds ratios (95% CI) of 0.80 (0.58–1.11) and 1.04 (0.67–1.61), respectively. No differences in the occurrence of allergy symptoms or asthma were observed when data were analysed by timing of supplementation or compliance with folic acid supplementation.
Conclusions Supplementation with low-dose folic acid only during the periconceptional period did not increase risk for allergy symptoms or asthma in children at 4–6 years of age in a population without staple fortification with folic acid.
Abstract
A large cohort showed no association between maternal folic acid supplementation and risk of asthma in children http://bit.ly/2RC7cDa
Footnotes
Author contributions: J. Liu analysed the data, drafted the initial manuscript and revised the manuscript. A. Ren conceptualised the study and critically revised the manuscript. Z. Li contributed to data analysis and reviewed the manuscript. A. Ren, R. Ye and J. Liu coordinated and supervised data collection. All authors approved the final manuscript as submitted and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.
This article has supplementary material available from openres.ersjournals.com
Conflict of interest: J. Liu has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: Z. Li has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: R. Ye has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: J. Liu has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: A. Ren has nothing to disclose.
Support statement: This work was supported in part by the National Key Research and Development Program, Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China (grant number 2016YFC1000501) and Natural Science Foundation of China (number 81202265). The original project was supported by a cooperative agreement between the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Peking University (number U01 DD000293). Funding information for this article has been deposited with the Crossref Funder Registry.
- Received September 14, 2019.
- Accepted January 19, 2020.
- Copyright ©ERS 2020
This article is open access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Licence 4.0.