Otherwise considered vital for human health, vitamin A is now believed to endanger the well-being of new borns, if consumed in excess
WHILE large doses of the synthetic counterparts of several vitamins are known
to be toxic to adults, the large intake of
one of these is now known to play havoc
with the well-being of unborn and newborn babies.
Currently under fire is vitamin A.
Found in dairy products, liver and green
leafy vegetables, its deficiency results in
retarded growth, lower resistance to
infection, dry skin, night blindness and
an eye disease called xerophthalmia.
Recently, researchers at the Boston
University School of Medicine in the US
found that the large intake of vitamin A
supplements by pregnant women cause
defects in the developing embryo.
Kenneth J Rothman and his colleagues
discovered that "among the babies born
to women who took more than 10,000
international units (IU) of vitamin A per
day in the form of supplements, about
one in 57 infants had a malformation
attributable to the supplement".
Currently, the recommended daily
allowance of vitamin A for pregnant
women in the US is.8,000 IU. "Larger
doses of it can cause a characteristic set
of birth defects," declare the researchers.
Apparently, the brain And the spinal
cord are the worst affected. While the
brain suffers from impaired development, the
spinal cord fails to get encapsulated by the vertebral column due to
its incomplete formation. In technical
parlance, the former abnormality is
called anencephaly and the latter as
spina bifida.
Apart from causing these birth
defects, vitamin A has now been held
responsible for weakening the effect of
the life-saving vaccines being administered to infants. A team of scientists at
the John Hopkins University in the US,
has issued a warning against the practice
of administering a massive dose of vitamin A to infants along with regular
immunisation programmes in the
developing countries. The team found
that vitamin A "suppressed any live virus
given as a vaccine" in the presence of
maternal antibodies. The mother's antibodies, which help the infant fight infections, remain in the child's blood stream
for nine months to one year after birth.
However, the mother's protection conferred on a child with not so well-defined an immune system, fights against the
friendly live virus given in vaccine form if large
vitamin A doses are also delivered.
The practice of large-scale administration of
vitamin A to children,
along with vaccines
against measles, polio,
tetanus and other deadly
diseases, started in some
countries of Asia and
Africa at the behest of
some international organisations, which
pressurised health agencies in these
countries. Whether the reasons behind
this campaign was protecting malnourished babies from eye diseases, or
improving the market for the vitamin,
remains open for debate.
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