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Tuesday January 27, 08:22 PM
Pregnant women told to get outdoors
Pregnant women are being reminded to get outdoors or take supplementary vitamin D after medical research firmed up links between schizophrenia and vitamin deficiency in babies. A connection between mental illness and vitamin D first emerged from statistics showing that during the colder winter months when there was less sunlight there was a seven to 10 per cent increase in the number of people born with schizophrenia.
Vitamin D can be absorbed from exposure to sunlight. Further research on rats bred with a vitamin D deficiency reinforced the statistical finding, with vitamin D-deficient rats being born with distorted brains and deformities that matched those found in human schizophrenia patients' brains. Dr Darryl Eyles, a researcher from the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research, said the work on vitamin D deficiencies was still at an early stage. But vitamin D was a direct regulator of a nerve growth factor essential for developing neurons in the brain. "We are now conducting animal model experiments concentrating on how the absence of vitamin D in the mother can affect foetal brain development," Dr Eyles said. Fiona Rogers from the University of Queensland said that although the research was at an early stage, pregnant women should still be urged to get more natural light. "It is advisable for pregnant women in particular to ensure they have moderate exposure to sunlight or supplement their diets with vitamin D fortified milk," she said. Dr Eyles will be presenting his work on vitamin D at the annual conference of the Australian Neuroscience Society in Melbourne this week.
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