ISLAMABAD - Folic acid supplements taken by expectant mothers can reduce the risk of their babies developing a brain tumour during childhood by almost half, according to an Australian study.
This is the result of a five-year study by the Australian Childhood Brain Tumour Consortium (Aus-CBT), led by Elizabeth Milne, professor at Telethon Institute for Child Health Research. The study stands out as the largest and most comprehensive national research done so far on this topic, the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention reports.
“We were specifically targeting FA-intake following from a similar national study on childhood leukaemia and building on the local finding that taking FA can reduce its risk,” Milne says, according to a Aus-CBT statement.
Previous reports on the protective effects of multivitamin use on childhood brain tumour (CBT) development were not able to pinpoint the most active constituent in the mix.
Aus-CBT has been the first to separate out multivitamin effects and investigate the link between the intake of FA alone, or combined with iron, vitamin A, B6, B12 or C and its connection with diagnosis of CBT in offspring.
“Indeed it was FA that appeared to be responsible for a (negative diagnosis) association, but it does not harm if it is taken in combination with other micronutrients,” Milne says.
Folate is required for reliable DNA synthesis and repair and Milne says: “There are lots of points where a folate deficiency can lead to malignant cell transformation and disease.”
Eating cheese may damage chances of becoming father
Young men who eat more than three slices of cheese a day may be risking their chances of becoming fathers, a new study has revealed. Even small amounts of full-fat dairy food have been shown to dramatically impair their fertility.
Harvard academics have discovered that men who eat just three portions a day had poorer quality sperm compared to others. A portion included an ounce of cheese (28g), a teaspoon of cream, a scoop of ice cream or glass of full-fat milk.
The researchers believe that female hormones that occur naturally in milk may be interfering with men’s ability to reproduce. Until recently, experts have been far more concerned with how women’s diets are affecting their chanced of having children.
But there is increasing evidence that men’s lifestyles - and crucially what they eat - may be just as important. Scientist from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, the US, compared the diets of 189 men aged 19 to 25.
None were overweight - they were all very fit and did at least one and a half hour’s exercise a week. They had each filled in a questionnaire answering how often they ate dairy products, fruit, meat and other types of food during a typical week. The researchers also looked at their sperm, including how fast it travelled and its shape.
They found that the sperm of men who ate more than three portions of full-fat dairy food a day was 25 percent poorer quality than those who had less. Myriam Afeiche, who led the study, explained that the female hormone oestrogen in milk that had come from the cow may be affecting men’s fertility. It may also be impaired by pesticides which find their way in to dairy products, she added.  Junk food during pregnancy as harmful to babies as smoking
A junk food diet of fatty chips, crisps and biscuits consumed by expectant mothers can be as harmful to the unborn baby as smoking, a new research has warned. Researchers led by the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology (CREAL) in Barcelona found that junk food can have a damaging effect on the unborn baby, leading to them being born a far lower than average weight.
In fact, chips could be just as dangerous to an unborn baby as smoking, experts have cautioned. Scientists have discovered that the culprit is a potentially deadly chemical called acrylamide which is found in home-cooked and processed foods including crisps, chips, bread and coffee, the Daily Express reported.
Acrylamide is a chemical which is produced naturally in food as a result of cooking starch-rich food at high temperatures, such as when baking or frying.
The study found that mothers-to-be who have a high intake of acrylamide are also more likely to have a baby which has a smaller head circumference.
The size of a child`s head has been associated with delayed neurodevelopment while lower birth weights have been associated with adverse health effects in early life.
Babies born to mothers with a high dietary intake of acrylamide were found to be up to 132 grammes lighter than babies born to mothers who had a low intake. The average birth weight among children who were exposed to the highest levels of acrylamide compared with children in the lowest was around 100 grammes.
The effect caused by acrylamide is comparable to lower birth weights caused by smoking when pregnant and the infant`s heads were also up to 0.33 centimetres smaller. “186 women from the Born in Bradford study took part in this major European research programme. We found that their babies had the highest levels of acrylamide out of all of the five centres, almost twice the level of the Danish babies,” Dr Laura Hardie, reader in molecular epidemiology at the University of Leeds, said.
“When we investigated their diet it was clear that the largest source of dietary acrylamide is from chips,” Hardie said. Researchers examined the diets of 1,100 pregnant women between 2006 and 2010 in Denmark, England, Greece, Norway and Spain.
They used food-frequency questionnaires on mothers and also examined each baby`s cord blood - which provides information about levels of acrylamide exposure during the last months of pregnancy.
“Reduced birth weight, in particular low birth weight, has been shown to be related to numerous adverse health effects early or later in life such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Furthermore, reduced birth head circumference has been associated with delayed neurodevelopment,” lead author Dr Marie Pedersen said.