Your Health

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In 1998 the March of Dimes, whose mission is to improve babies’ health by preventing birth defects, teamed up with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the U.S. to deliver a public-health message: women of childbearing age should take 400 micrograms of folic acid daily. It’s a simple act of preventive medicine that cuts the risk of neural-tube defects like spina bifida in developing fetuses by more than 50%. Apparently the message stuck. A March of Dimes poll designed to gauge awareness of the supplement’s benefits found that while only half of American women ages 18 to 45 knew what folic acid was in 1995, that figure has now jumped to 77%. By 2004, the number of women taking their daily dose had risen to 40%, an all-time high. So, did the folic-acid advice reduce birth defects as intended? Indeed it did. According to CDC statistics, the incidence of two major types of neural-tube defect has dropped about 25% in the U.S. since 1995.