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Double-blind randomised controlled trial of folate treatment before conception to prevent recurrence of neural-tube defects.
Open accessAbstract
A randomized controlled double-blind trial was undertaken in south Wales to prevent the recurrence of neural-tube defects in women who had had one child with a neural-tube defect. Sixty women were allocated before conception to take 4 mg of folic acid a day before and during early pregnancy and 44 complied with these instructions. Fifty-one women were allocated to placebo treatment. There were no recurrences among the compliant mothers but two among the non-compliers and four among the women in the placebo group. Thus there were no recurrences among those who received supplementation and six among those who did not; this difference is significant (p = 0.04). It is concluded that folic acid supplementation might be a cheap, safe, and effective method of primary prevention of neural-tube defects but that this must be confirmed in a large, multicentre trial.
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Citations
Cited by
Prevention of neural tube defects: Results of the Medical Research Council Vitamin Study
(1991) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/0140-6736(91)90133-a · Cited by 3,472
Prevention of neural tube defects: Results of the Medical Research Council vitamin study
Wald, N., Sneddon, J., Densem, J., Frost, C., & Stone, R. (1992) · International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics · doi:10.1016/0020-7292(92)90076-u · Cited by 2,364
Folic Acid: Nutritional Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Role in Disease Processes
Lucock, M. (2000) · Molecular Genetics and Metabolism · doi:10.1006/mgme.2000.3027 · Cited by 815
Neural tube defects and folate: case far from closed
Blom, H. J., Shaw, G. M., den Heijer, M., & Finnell, R. H. (2006) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn1986 · Cited by 562
Tamura, T., & Picciano, M. F. (2006) · The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition · doi:10.1093/ajcn/83.5.993 · Cited by 379
Metadata
- Authors
- Laurence, K. M., James, N., Miller, M. H., Tennant, G. B., & Campbell, H.
- Venue
- BMJ
- Publisher
- BMJ
- Published
- 1981-05-09
- Volume
- 282
- Issue
- 6275
- Pages
- 1509-1511
- ISSN
- 0007-1447 (ISSN-L)
- 0959-8138
- 1468-5833
- OpenAlex
- W1986667412
- Cited by
- 684
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 21.50
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
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- Laurence, K. M., James, N., Miller, M. H., Tennant, G. B., & Campbell, H. (1981). Double-blind randomised controlled trial of folate treatment before conception to prevent recurrence of neural-tube defects. BMJ. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.282.6275.1509
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
