Prenatal maternal docosahexaenoic acid intake and infant information processing at 4.5mo and 9mo:a longitudinal study

Rees, A. and Sirois, S. and Wearden, A. (2019) Prenatal maternal docosahexaenoic acid intake and infant information processing at 4.5mo and 9mo:a longitudinal study. PLoS ONE, 14 (2). ISSN 1932-6203

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Abstract

Previous research suggesting an association between maternal prenatal docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) intake and infant cognition has yet to assess whether there is a critical trimester for the observed effects. We used a comprehensive Food Frequency Questionnaire to estimate DHA levels during both the second and third trimesters of pregnancy, in a sample of 125 pregnant women. Infants were assessed at 4.5 months and 9 months post-partum using specific tests of visual acuity, habituation, and visual attention. Based on maternal DHA levels during pregnancy, mothers were subdivided into high, medium, and low groups, and their infants compared for task performance using one-way ANOVAs with maternal DHA groups. On the 9 month visual acuity test, infants whose mothers were in the medium DHA group performed significantly better than those with mothers in the low or high DHA groups (p = 0.008). However, no significant finding was found for any of the other cognitive assessment measures. Despite a number of studies reporting a positive effect of higher DHA levels on cognitive development, this study fails to support those conclusions. We can, however, conclude that it appears to be DHA intake in the third trimester specifically, which is influencing the development of visual acuity towards the end of the first postnatal year. © 2019 Rees et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
PLoS ONE
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2700
Subjects:
?? AGRICULTURAL AND BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES(ALL)BIOCHEMISTRY, GENETICS AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY(ALL)MEDICINE(ALL) ??
ID Code:
131681
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
06 Mar 2019 16:05
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
16 Sep 2023 01:53