A recent American Heart Association (AHA) Rapid Access Journal Report stated that food that is fortified with folic acid has been connected to reduced congenital heart defects.
Folic acid is a B vitamin that human beings need in their systems for countless biological functions. New research in Circulation, the AHA journal, suggests that eating foods containing folic acid may be helpful for congenital heart defects.
The scientists took data from approximately 6 million Canadian births between 1990 and 2011, discovering that folic acid food fortification is connected to an approximately 11 percent decrease in congenital heart defect rates.
In addition, the foods were beneficial for reducing conotruncal defects, or severe heart outflow tract abnormalities, by 27 percent; atrial and ventricular septal defects, which are holes in the walls that divide the heart chambers, by 15 percent; and coarctation of the aorta, a narrowing of the major artery that distributes blood in the body, by 23 percent.
“Our study examined the effect of folic acid food fortification on each specific subtype of congenital heart disease based on the Canadian experience before and after food fortification was made mandatory in 1998,” Dr. K.S. Joseph, the study’s senior author and professor at the University of British Columbia, said.
