A new study finds that children whose mothers were malnourished but who took vitamin A supplements during pregnancy had stronger lungs during their childhood. The New England Journal of Medicine reports the effects are more noticeable when the child reaches the age of nine.
According to a study conducted on 1371 children in Nepal, there was a 3% greater lung capacity in those whose mother took vitamin A compared with children whose mothers took a placebo.
Giving vitamin A early to pregnant women in countries plagued by malnutrition could be very beneficial to the lung health of children later on, according to the team of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
190 million preschool children and 19 million pregnant women have a vitamin A deficiency. This causes significant health problems to young lungs.
Previous studies have also reported that taking a vitamin A or beta-carotene supplement decreased the risk of a woman dying from complications during pregnancy by 44%.