The Fuss About Folate

Food allergies and asthma in children are a big deal. Parents worry about their children having a fatal reaction to a peanut, or whether they won’t have their inhalers on hand if they have a nasty asthma attack at school. Physicians have been busy trying to figure out what causes food allergies and asthma, as well as how to treat it. 

At the annual meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunology in New Orleans, it was announced at a press conference that too much folate during pregnancy could be a cause of allergies. This was news to me, but apparently it is a cause of concern and worthy of a study.

At the meeting’s featured poster session, there was additional information showing that higher plasma folate levels in pregnant women was significantly associated with an increased risk of their children developing asthma at 3 years of age.

So, what’s a pregnant woman to do? I’m not sure what kind of play this might get in the mainstream press, but when I talked to the study authors  -- Dr. Siri E. Haberg, of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo, and Dr. Stephanie London, of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Durham, N.C. -- they stressed that pregnant women should stop taking prenatal vitamins. They also noted that the study was not meant to drive any type of clinical recommendations.

I think this is yet another example of balancing risks and benefits, and an occasion when you might have too much of a good thing. The benefits of folate in preventing birth defects are well studied, and probably outweigh the increased risk that children may develop asthma. But on the other hand, look at what happened with women and hormone replacement therapy.

What happens if future studies really show that excessive folate during pregnancy promotes asthma in children? Until then, should physicians advise their patients to find a happy medium and take less folate?

Studies are currently underway that will hopefully answer these questions and provide more information on the link between folate and allergies.

Heidi Splete (on Twitter @hsplete)

_{Image courtesy sadalit via Flickr Creative Commons}