KU Researchers awarded grant for DHA study
LAWRENCE - The nutritional benefits of DHA on brain and eye development are widely known in the health community, but now researchers on the KU campus have been awarded $2.5 million from the National Institute of Health to take their study of 350 pregnant women to the next level.
The researchers believe that children who are fed DHA at high levels before they’re born could have higher IQ’s and advanced language development. “DHA accumulates most rapidly in the babies brain during the last TWO trimesters of pregnancy," said John Colombo, the director of the Life Span Institute. "Right now we mostly supplement babies after they are born but this is an attempt to see whether it makes a difference before,”
During the clinical trial, Colombo and a partner gave 600 milligrams of DHA to half of the pregnant women during their last trimester. The other half were given a placebo. The women who took the DHA had heavier babies and had a longer gestation. The money allows researchers to continue to track the children for five more years.