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Maternal and pediatric nutrition

Folic acid supplementation and dietary folate intake, and risk of preeclampsia

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 69, pages 1145–1150 (2015)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Background/Objectives:

Folic acid supplementation has been suggested to reduce the risk of preeclampsia. However, results from few epidemiologic studies have been inconclusive. We investigated the hypothesis that folic acid supplementation and dietary folate intake before conception and during pregnancy reduce the risk of preeclampsia.

Subjects/Methods:

A birth cohort study was conducted in 2010–2012 at the Gansu Provincial Maternity & Child Care Hospital in Lanzhou, China. A total of 10 041 pregnant women without chronic hypertension or gestational hypertension were enrolled.

Results:

Compared with nonusers, folic acid supplement users had a reduced risk of preeclampsia (OR=0.61, 95% CI: 0.43–0.87). A significant dose–response of duration of use was observed among women who used folic acid supplemention during pregnancy only (P-trend=0.007). The reduced risk associated with folic acid supplement was similar for mild or severe preeclampsia and for early- or late-onset preeclampsia, although the statistical significant associations were only observed for mild (OR=0.50, 95% CI: 0.30–0.81) and late-onset (OR=0.60, 95% CI: 0.42–0.86) preeclampsia. The reduced risk associated with dietary folate intake during pregnancy was only seen for severe preeclampsia (OR=0.52, 95% CI: 0.31–0.87, for the highest quartile of dietary folate intake compared with the lowest).

Conclusions:

Our study results suggest that folic acid supplementation and higher dietary folate intake during pregnancy reduce the risk of preeclampsia. Future studies are needed to confirm the associations.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all the study personnel from the Gansu Provincial Maternity and Child Care Hospital for their exceptional efforts on study subject recruitment. This work was supported by internal funding from the Gansu Provincial Maternity and Child Care Hospital, and the National Institutes of Health grants (K02HD70324).

Author information

Author notes

  1. Y Wang, N Zhao, Q Liu and Y Zhang: These authors contributed equally to this work.

  2. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Gansu Provincial Maternity and Child Care Hospital, Lanzhou, Gansu, China

    Y Wang, J Qiu, X He, M Zhou, H Cui, L Lv, X Lin, C Zhang, H Zhang, R Xu, D Zhu, Y Dang, X Han, H Zhang, H Bai, Y Chen, Z Tang, R Lin, T Yao, J Su, X Xu, X Liu, W Wang, B Ma, S Liu, W Qiu & Q Liu

  2. Department of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA,

    N Zhao, H Huang, J Liang & Y Zhang

  3. Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, Shanxi, China

    S Wang

  4. Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    R A Ehrenkranz

  5. Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, Department of Health and Human Sciences, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA

    C Kim

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Correspondence to Q Liu or Y Zhang.

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Wang, Y., Zhao, N., Qiu, J. et al. Folic acid supplementation and dietary folate intake, and risk of preeclampsia. Eur J Clin Nutr 69, 1145–1150 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ejcn.2014.295

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ejcn.2014.295

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