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Preventing Fetal Body and Brain Size Reduction in Low-income Smoking Mothers: A Randomized Clinical Trial

H

Hamisu Salihu

Status

Completed

Conditions

Fetal Brain Size
Fetal Body Size

Treatments

Dietary Supplement: Folic Acid

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this study is to find out if folic acid prevents of the reduction of fetal body and brain size in infants whose mothers smoke.

Full description

Smoking during pregnancy remains a common practice despite smoking cessation programs offered to mothers. Only 20-40% of women quit smoking during pregnancy which implies that a majority of smokers continue smoking despite the associated feto-infant morbidity and mortality. It is therefore important to identify ways and means of protecting these infants as they grow and develop during intrauterine life. In this study, we propose to assess the utility of higher-strength folic acid (4mg) combined with smoking cessation programs as compared to standard of care (smoking cessation program and low-strength (0.8mg) folic acid) in reducing the level of morbidity (specifically fetal body and brain size) sustained by infants of smokers

Enrollment

495 patients

Sex

Female

Ages

18 to 44 years old

Volunteers

No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

((1) Smoker, based on presence of detectable cotinine in saliva (biomarker).; (2) Ages 18-44 years; (3) Singleton gestation (< 20 weeks), confirmed by sonogram; (4) Residents of Tampa, Florida or surrounding area in order to facilitate follow-up and reduce attrition rate.

Exclusion criteria

(a) an indication for chronic blood transfusion. Women receiving chronic blood transfusions will not be enrolled, as transfused red blood cells (RBC) can result in inaccurate analysis of folate RBC levels88; (b) generalized seizure disorder treated with anti-convulsant medication: Patients with generalized seizure disorder treated with anticonvulsant medication will be excluded because of the potential association with folic acid deficiency88.

Trial design

Primary purpose

Prevention

Allocation

Randomized

Interventional model

Parallel Assignment

Masking

Quadruple Blind

495 participants in 2 patient groups

Higher-strength folic acid
Experimental group
Description:
Higher-strength folic acid (4mg).
Treatment:
Dietary Supplement: Folic Acid
Low-strength folic acid
No Intervention group
Description:
Low-strength (0.8mg) folic acid (standard of care)

Trial contacts and locations

1

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Data sourced from clinicaltrials.gov

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