Vitamin C can help decrease the impact of smoking during pregnancy on a newborn's lung function and prevent wheezing.
Time and again scientists have proved that smoking when pregnant affects the baby's lungs and lead to wheezing and asthma. However, a new study has found that for women who simply can't give up smoking even when pregnant, taking Vitamin C can help improve the newborn's lung function and prevent wheezing.
"Vitamin C is a simple, safe and inexpensive treatment that may decrease the impact of smoking during pregnancy on childhood respiratory health," said lead author Cynthia T. McEvoy, MD, MCR, FAAP, associate professor of pediatrics at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) Doernbecher Children's Hospital.
The study was conducted on 159 women that where pregnant for less than 22 weeks and couldn't kick their habit of smoking. The women were randomly assigned to take either one 500 milligram capsule of vitamin C or a placebo each day with a prenatal vitamin.
None of them knew what was in the capsule. Apart from the pregnant women, a group of non pregnant women were also part of the study.
Results showed that babies born to smoking women who took vitamin C had significantly improved lung function at birth compared to babies whose mothers took a placebo. The researchers also tracked the development of the child in the first year of its life. They found that infants whose mothers were in the vitamin C group had significantly less wheezing through 1 year of age than the infants whose moms had received the placebo.
"Getting women to quit smoking during pregnancy has to be priority one, but this finding provides a way to potentially help the infants born of the roughly 50 percent of pregnant smokers who won't or just can't quit smoking no matter what is tried," said study co-author Eliot Spindel, MD, PhD, senior scientist at the Oregon National Primate Research Center at OHSU.
