Eating Fish During Pregnancy Won't Hurt Your Baby

First Posted: Jan 22, 2015 05:25 PM EST
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Could eating fish during pregnancy actually protect your baby's brain from mercury? It may sound counterintuitive at first, but recent findings published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition show that women who frequently consumed fish while pregnant had babies with improved performance on the Psychomotor Development Index (PDI)--a test of motor skills that includes grasping and rolling over for both conceptual and psychological functioning.

"The benefits of fish consumption may outweigh, or even mask, any potentially adverse affects of mercury," said Edwin van Wijngaarden, PhD, one of the study's authors, in a news release, describing the benefits of the food, which is rich in essential for optimal brain development.

For the study, researchers recruited 1,265 mother-child pairs during their first antenatal visit from one of eight health centers in the Seychelles between January of 2008 and January of 2011. They took blood samples from the women in their 28th week of pregnancy to assess PUFA consumption and collected a hair sample from each to assess prenatal mercury exposure. Women were also asked to fill out a questionnaire that gauged how much fish they ate per week.

The children were then evaluated at about 20 months of age when using Bayley Scales of Infant Development II (BSID-II), the MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI), and the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised. The PDI and the MDI are both components of the BSID-II.

"These findings show no overall association between prenatal exposure to mercury through fish consumption and neurodevelopmental outcomes," Wijgaarden concluded. "It is also becoming increasingly clear that the benefits of fish consumption may outweigh, or even mask, any potentially adverse effects of mercury."

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