NEWS

Expectant mothers recruited to test whether nutrient in mom’s diet boosts babies’ brain power

By MEGAN MILLER

School of Public Health

CHAPEL HILL -- Researchers in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s departments of nutrition and psychology are recruiting subjects for a study testing whether expectant mothers with diets high in choline could improve their unborn babies’ future learning and memory abilities.

The study is based on past observations that pregnant and breast-feeding women have an increased requirement for the vitamin-like nutrient and that rats ingesting high amounts of choline while pregnant have offspring that perform better in tests of their memory and learning than those whose mothers consume low amounts of the nutrient.

The study will be the first done in humans to test whether infants show similar mental gains when their mothers take in extra choline.

Dr. Steven Zeisel, professor and chairman of the department of nutrition within the schools of public health and medicine, and Dr. Steven Reznick, professor in the department of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences, are co-investigators on the study.

Zeisel, who also serves as associate dean of research in the School of Public Health, is a leading figure in choline research and served in 1998 on the National Academy of Sciences panel that named the vitamin-B-like substance an essential nutrient for good health. Reznick, director of the Program in Developmental Psychology, has pioneered tests for memory and learning in human infants.

"Our studies in rats indicate that the very structure and function of the memory centers of the brain may be determined by choline availability in the maternal diet," Zeisel said. "We do not yet know if these results will hold true in humans, though it would be of tremendous interest and importance if we find that dietary choline during pregnancy and lactation has positive effects on infants’ brain development."

Pregnant women who enroll in the 18-month study will receive extra choline in the form of eggs or supplements to consume during the second and third trimesters of their pregnancy and the first month after delivery.

Infants ages 10 months to a year will be tested for their performance on tests of their memory, language ability and general intelligence. In one test, researchers will use a device developed by Reznick and colleagues, a baseball cap that slips over an infant’s head with detectors attached to track eye movements as they watch images on a screen.

"By tracking eye movements, we are able to determine how well infants remember and understand ongoing events," Reznick said.

The test will be used to determine whether these abilities in infants are affected by maternal choline.

Choline is used by the body to perform several key functions, such as building the membranes enclosing cells, transporting fat and cholesterol from the liver, and forming a molecule that relays messages between nerve cells such as those found in the brain. Researchers have said this is one possible explanation for how the nutrient could improve infants’ mental abilities. Choline is found in high amounts in protein products such as eggs, milk, beans and nuts.

To date, recommendations for daily intake of choline have been made only for adult men and non-pregnant women. If maternal choline intake proves to enhance infants’ memory and learning potential, pregnant women may be advised to consume foods high in choline or to take prenatal vitamins reformulated to contain choline in addition to other nutrients known to promote infant brain development, such as folate.

The study, funded by the American Egg Board and United Egg Producers’ Egg Nutrition Center, will recruit 60 subjects in the next few months who will be compensated for their participation. For information on enrolling in the study, contact Brigitte Stephenson, study coordinator, at (919) 408-3320, extension 27, or bjstep@unc.edu.

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(Miller, a recent doctoral graduate of the department of nutrition, is from Franklin, Ohio.)

Note: Zeisel can be reached at (919) 966-7218 or steven_zeisel@unc.edu; Reznick at (919) 962-9720 or Reznick@unc.edu; and Leslie Fischer, project director, at (919) 408-3320, extension 31, or LFischer@email.unc.edu.

School of Public Health contact: Lisa Katz, (919) 966-7467 or lisa_katz@unc.edu

News Services contact: Deb Saine at (919) 962-8415