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Effect of zinc supplementation of pregnant women on the mental and psychomotor development of their children at 5 y of age^1,2,3

¹ From the Departments of Nutrition Sciences (TT), Obstetrics and Gynecology (RLG and VRC), and Pediatrics (KGN) and the Civitan International Research Center (SLR), University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Background: A negative effect of prenatal zinc deficiency on brain function has been well established in experimental animals, but this association in humans is controversial.

Objective: We evaluated the effect of prenatal zinc supplementation on the mental and psychomotor development of 355 children whose mothers participated in a double-blind trial of zinc supplementation that resulted in increased head circumference and birth weight.

Design: The children took 6 tests—the Differential Ability Scales, Visual Sequential Memory, Auditory Sequential Memory, Knox Cube, Gross Motor Scale, and Grooved Pegboard tests—at a mean age of 5.3 y. The scores were compared between the children of women who received a daily oral dose of 25 mg Zn during the second half of pregnancy and the children of women who received placebo.

Results: There were no differences in the test scores of neurologic development between the 2 groups. We analyzed the scores in 4 subgroups on the basis of maternal body mass index, because the increases in birth weight and head circumference due to the supplementation occurred only in the children of women with a body mass index (in kg/m²) < 26.0 in the original trial. No differences in the scores were found between these subgroups.

Conclusions: Zinc supplementation of women in the latter half of pregnancy had no effect on the neurologic development of their children at age 5 y. It is not known whether our findings of no positive effect in the population with apparently inadequate zinc nutriture can be readily extrapolated to other populations.

Key Words: Mental and psychomotor development • prenatal zinc supplementation • fetal zinc nutriture • head circumference • birth weight

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