A long-running project following 285,000 Chinese women, begun in 1983, helped demonstrate that folic acid could prevent spina bifida, a rare birth defect.
Other risk factors for having a child with spina bifida include obesity, poorly controlled diabetes, and taking medications that interfere with folate metabolism, like certain anti-seizure medications.
For example, it could be a congenital defect like spina bifida, or an acquired one like a skull fracture, where there might be CSF leaking through the sinuses.
Women who do not get enough folic acid are at risk of giving birth to infants with part of their spinal cord or brain exposed. This disabling condition is called spina bifida.
Now, the exact cause of all three types of spina bifida isn't known, but there are known risk factors like folate or Vitamin B9 deficiency during fetal development.
This one's the least common form of spina bifida, and because the spinal cord itself is not damaged, these individuals often do not experience the severe symptoms that are seen in myelomeningocele.
Spina bifida wasn't the only obstacle that Karin Muraszko had to face growing up, but the person she became and the accomplishment she made arethe reason why she's today's character study.
脊并不是 Karin Muraszko 成长过程中必须面对的唯障碍,但她成为的人和她取得的成就是她今天的性格研究的原因。
In fact, occulta is latin for hidden, which is appropriate, since many of the normal prenatal tests used to diagnose spina bifida don't catch the disorder, because the deformities in the tissues of the lower back are tiny.