Eating Eggs When Pregnant (choline) lowers chance of getting aggressive breast cancer in offspring

Eating Eggs When Pregnant Affects Breast Cancer In Offspring:
ScienceDaily 2008.12.02
"The researchers made the discovery in rats by studying females whose mothers were fed varying amounts of choline during pregnancy. Different groups of pregnant rats received diets containing standard amounts of choline, no choline at all, or extra choline. Then the researchers treated the female offspring with a chemical that causes cancer of the mammary gland (breast cancer). Although animals in all groups developed mammary cancer, the daughters of mothers that had received extra choline during pregnancy had slow growing tumors while daughters of mothers that had no choline during pregnancy had fast growing tumors...The researchers also found multiple genetic and molecular changes in the rats' tumors that correlated with survival outcomes. For example, the slow growing tumors in rats had a genetic pattern similar to those seen in breast cancers of women who are considered to have a good prognosis. The fast growing tumors in mice had a pattern of genetic changes similar to those seen in women with a more aggressive disease. The researchers also found evidence that these genetic changes may result from the way that choline affects modifications of the DNA within the mammary gland of fetuses as they develop in the womb..."

And of course the evidence that choline improves the memory of your children.


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Get Smart About What You Eat And You Might Actually Improve Your Intelligence

Get Smart About What You Eat And You Might Actually Improve Your Intelligence: ScienceDaily (July 3, 2008) —
" New research findings published online in The FASEB Journal provide more evidence that if we get smart about what we eat, our intelligence can improve. According to MIT scientists, dietary nutrients found in a wide range of foods from infant formula to eggs increase brain synapses and improve cognitive abilities...In the study, gerbils were given various combinations of three compounds needed for healthy brain membranes: choline, found in eggs; uridine monophosphate (UMP) found in beets; and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), found in fish oils. Other gerbils were given none of these to serve as a baseline. Then they were checked for cognitive changes four weeks later...The scientists found that the gerbils given choline with UMP and/or DHA showed cognitive improvements in tasks thought to be relevant to gerbils, such as navigating mazes. After these tests were concluded, the researchers dissected the mouse brains for a biological cause for the improvement. They found biochemical evidence that there was more than the usual amount of brain synapse activity, which was consistent with behaviors indicating higher intelligence."

Why a science release is so incredibly light on science, such as this one, is a bit of a mystery. But when you're releasing an article talking about increasing intelligence and the article isn't very intelligent...

If the research holds and is legit, this could be exciting. Next press release lets hope they trust the public with specifics.

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Omega-3 Intake During Last Months Of Pregnancy Boosts An Infant's Cognitive And Motor Development

Omega-3 Intake During Last Months Of Pregnancy Boosts An Infant's Cognitive And Motor Development - ScienceDaily
2008.04.11
"...omega-3 intake during the last months of pregnancy boosts an infant's sensory, cognitive, and motor development..."DHA concentration in the umbilical cord is a good indicator of intra-uterine exposure to omega-3s during the last trimester of pregnancy, a crucial period for the development of retinal photoreceptors and neurons...Tests conducted on these infants at 6 and 11 months revealed that their visual acuity as well as their cognitive and motor development were closely linked to DHA concentration in the umbilical cord blood at the time of their birth. However, there was very little relation between test results and DHA concentration in a mother's milk among infants who were breast-fed..."These results highlight the crucial importance of prenatal exposure to omega-3s in a child's development,"...They also noted that DHA concentration was higher in the fetus's blood than in the mother's. "While developing its nervous system, a fetus needs great quantities of DHA. It can even transform other types of omega-3s into DHA in order to develop its brain,"..."

Also:

Prenatal Choline For A Smarter Baby and Adult

Nutrient during pregnancy 'super-charges' brain NewScientist 3/12/04 "Taking a nutrient called choline during pregnancy could "super-charge" children's brains for life, suggests a study in rats."..."due to having bigger brain cells in vital areas"..."Choline, a member of the vitamin B family, is found in egg yolks, liver and other meats "..."US Institute of Medicine added choline to the list of essential nutrients, particularly for pregnant women, in its 2003 recommendations"..."The neurons of rats born to mothers given extra choline fired electrical signals more rapidly and for longer periods, indicating a capacity to communicate more easily"..."Previous work by Steven Zeiser at the University of North Carolina has shown choline alters a crucial gene by adding a methyl group on to it. This switches off the gene, CDKN-3, which usually inhibits cell division in the memory regions of the brain"
Prenatal Choline Supplements Make Brain Cells Larger, Faster
"The implications for humans are profound, said the researchers, because the collective data on choline suggests that simply augmenting the diets of pregnant women with this one nutrient could affect their children's lifelong learning and memory. In theory, choline could boost cognitive function, diminish age-related memory decline, and reduce the brain's vulnerability toxic insults"

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Dirty air may lower kids IQ

Kids who live in neighborhoods with heavy traffic pollution have lower IQs - Yahoo News/Reuters
2008.02.15
"The effect of pollution on intelligence was similar to that seen in children whose mothers smoked 10 cigarettes a day while pregnant, or in kids who have been exposed to lead...The more heavily exposed children were to black carbon, the lower were their scores on several intelligence tests... heavy exposure to black carbon was linked to a 3.4-point drop in IQ, on average. Heavily exposed children also scored lower on tests of vocabulary, memory and learning...traffic pollution may exert harmful effects by causing inflammation and oxidative damage to the brain..."

Prenatal ways to boost your child's intelligence here.

Choline and fish oil supplements are still beneficial to children's intellectual development, along with exercise and a healthy diet of fruits and veggies. Educational efforts like the Abecedarian (0-5yrs) method can boost intelligence and life outcomes.

Don't let the folks say you can't do anything if you can't move from a highly polluted area.

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Breastfeeding Boost IQ In Infants With 'Helpful' Genetic Variant

Breastfeeding Boost IQ In Infants With 'Helpful' Genetic Variant - ScienceDaily
2007.11.06
"...in two studies of breast-fed infants involving more than 3,000 children in Britain and New Zealand, breastfeeding was found to raise intelligence an average of nearly 7 IQ points if the children had a particular version of a gene called FADS2..."It is this genetic variant in FADS2, a gene involved in the control of fatty acid pathways, that may help the children make better use of the breast milk and promote the brain development that is associated with a higher IQ score," said Julia Kim-Cohen, assistant professor of psychology at Yale..."Children who do not carry the 'helpful' genetic variant have normal average IQ scores," Kim-Cohen said. "Being breastfed for them is not associated with an IQ advantage."...Ninety percent of the children in the two study groups had at least one copy of the "C" version of FADS2, which yielded higher IQ if they were breast-fed. The other 10 percent, with only the "G" versions of the gene, showed no IQ advantage or disadvantage from breastfeeding...The gene was singled out for the researchers' attention because it produces an enzyme that helps convert dietary fatty acids into the polyunsaturated fatty acids DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and AA (arachidonic acid) that have been shown to accumulate in the human brain during the first months after birth...laboratory studies in which rodents and primates were fed supplemental fatty acids have shown increased brain DHA concentrations and enhanced abilities in tests of learning, memory and problem-solving..."Our findings support the idea that the nutritional content of breast milk accounts for the differences seen in human IQ," Moffitt said. "But it's not a simple all-or-none connection: it depends to some extent on the genetic makeup of each infant."..."

Gene explains why breast-feeding makes kids smarter - Yahoo! News
2007.11.05
"...researchers ruled out alternate explanations, saying the effect of FADS2 applied equally to babies with normal and low birth weight. The effect was also the same no matter the mother's social class or IQ...The team also tested the mothers' DNA and concluded that the FADS2 gene did not somehow alter the quality of breast milk..."We took cells from the children and then analyzed DNA and then we compared how they scored on IQ tests and looked up if they were breast-fed as babies," Moffitt said in a telephone interview. "It was very straightforward."..."

The greatest boost to IQ and memory seems to come from prenatal choline supplementation. ""Taking a nutrient called choline during pregnancy could "super-charge" children's brains for life"

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Choline, An Alternative Therapy For Asthma

Choline, An Alternative Therapy For Asthma - Medical News Today
2007.09.28
"...Choline treatment inhibits the development of airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR) and eosinophilic inflammation in the lungs. This reduction of AHR is accompanied by a reduction in immunoglobulin E antibody (IgE) and other inflammatory parameters like type 2 T-helper cell (Th2) cytokines, in a manner comparable with current therapy of asthma. Choline treatment also downregulates mucus production and prevents airway obstruction...Choline supplementation increases membrane phosphatidyl choline and thereby decreases the mediator release from human basophils... The results of the present study are encouraging, as choline therapy may enable to substitute or reduce the dosage and side effects of steroid therapy in asthma."

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Prenatal omega-3 boosts baby's brainpower

Prenatal omega-3 may boost baby's brainpower Reuters/Yahoo!News 6/22/07 "Children whose mothers get enough omega-3 fatty acid during pregnancy may have sharper problem-solving skills in infancy...Researchers found that 9-month-olds whose mothers had eaten DHA-fortified bars during pregnancy performed better on a test of problem-solving abilities than infants whose mothers had not added DHA to their diets...experts recommend that pregnant women get 300 milligrams (mg) of DHA each day...U.S. women meet this goal...It's not entirely clear what the better problem-solving performance at 9 months of age will mean later in life. However, other studies have found that DHA supplements during pregnancy seem to offer a "developmental advantage" later in childhood as well, Dr. Carol J. Lammi-Keefe, a co-author on the current study...One study found that giving women fish oil during pregnancy and during the first few months of breastfeeding seemed to boost their children's IQ scores at age 4..."DHA during pregnancy has benefits for infant neural development, and most pregnant women can benefit from increasing the intake of DHA in their diets,"..."

Best to get your DHA from either algae based capsules, or fish oil. Both will be safer - no heavy metals issue associated with actual fish.

But again, if it's brain boosting you want for your child, omega-3's offer only a small boost compared to what choline appears to offer.

Also 300mg of DHA is probably too low. Research from Norway has shown greater benefits with higher amounts of DHA. As with choline, I'm sure you'll see the recommended prenatal dose grow year after year. In the Norwegian study they used 1200mg a day. It's the over cautious school of medicine that is at work here. If you want to wait another decade or two before everything is conclusive, stay at the low doses of these. If you want greater health and intellectual benefit for your child - the research is fairly clear - go with a higher dose.

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vitamin supplements can reduce risk of having underweight or undersized baby

Vitamin pills prevent low-weight babies Reuters/Yahoo!News 4/4/07 "The study, conducted in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, involved 8,468 pregnant women who were free of the AIDS virus and who received iron and folic acid supplements, both proven prenatal treatments. Half were given supplements containing vitamins C, E and a mix of B vitamins. The rest got placebos...The fetal death rate stayed around 5 percent and the rate of premature delivery was nearly 17 percent regardless of whether mothers got the vitamins, the team, led by Wafaie Fawzi of Harvard University's School of Public Health, reported...But the risk of having a low birth-weight baby dropped from 9.4 percent among the placebo recipients to 7.8 percent for the babies whose mothers took the supplements...About 20 million low birth-weight babies are born each year, 96 percent of them in developing countries. Babies of low birth weight, defined as less than 5.5 pounds (2,500 grams), are more likely to die young, have growth and learning difficulties and may later be prone to diabetes and heart disease...Adding the extra vitamins, they said, would probably increase that cost by just 20 cents, "and scaling up prenatal multiple micronutrient supplementation could be a highly cost-effective approach to improving both outcomes among pregnant women in developing countries"

Here's an amazingly cheap and effective way to lower death rates of children and better the chances of healthier babies and healthier adults in the developing world. Let's hope foreign aid includes money for such soon - also maybe a few billionaires will see fit to invest in this, to get a program off the ground faster. Add choline (another very cheap supplement) to the mix and improve health further and fill the world with more intelligent folks.

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Choline helps with prenatal alcohol exposure

Choline given after birth improves learning and behavior in rats exposed to alcohol during development EurekAlert 2/28/07 "Giving choline to infants who were exposed in the womb to alcohol may mitigate some of the resulting problems...research led by Jennifer Thomas, PhD, is using an animal model to assess the potential therapeutic value of choline...Choline plays a number of roles in brain development. It is also a precursor to acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter involved in learning and cognition, among other functions. Choline is available in many foods, such as eggs and liver, and sold over the counter in well-tolerated forms such as lecithin, choline bitartrate or chloride, and phosphatidylcholine. Due to choline’s beneficial effects on nervous-system development, women are advised to consume 450 mg a day while pregnant and 550 mg a day while breast feeding (the tolerable upper limit has been set at 3.5 g per day). For infants, 125-150 mg/day is considered adequate during the first year, rising as the child grows older. Choline is added to some prenatal vitamins and baby formulas, and is now added to some children’s multivitamins and cereals...The current study of 170 rats found that giving choline to rat pups exposed to alcohol during the equivalent of the third trimester, when there’s a spurt in brain growth, significantly reduced the severity of alcohol-related over-activity and spatial learning deficits. The benefits lasted months after choline treatment, suggesting that choline’s effects are long-lasting...can alter brain development following a developmental insult. Early dietary interventions may reduce the severity of some fetal alcohol effects, even when administered after birth..."

Taking choline during pregnancy has also been associated with boosting intelligence and memory of children.

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prenatal diet of fish makes for smarter babies

How eating fish during pregnancy could make baby brainier Guardian Unlimited 2/16/07 "A study of 9,000 British families suggests that women who eat seafood during pregnancy could have brainier children. The research suggests that those who avoid fish or do not eat enough of it risk depriving their unborn children of important nutrients that are needed to help brain development...A study of 9,000 British families suggests that women who eat seafood during pregnancy could have brainier children. The research suggests that those who avoid fish or do not eat enough of it risk depriving their unborn children of important nutrients that are needed to help brain development...Mothers who ate more seafood than was considered safe according to US guidelines had children who as toddlers were more advanced in fine-motor, communication and social skills; the children also showed more positive social behaviour and were less likely to have low verbal IQ scores at the age of eight. Those children whose mothers had eaten no fish were 28% more likely to have poor communication skills at 18 months, 35% more likely to have poor fine-motor coordination at three-and-a-half, 44% more likely to have poor social behaviour at seven, and 48% more likely to have a relatively low verbal IQ at the age of eight, compared with the children of women who had eaten more fish than advised by the US guidelines."

Although prenatal choline probably has a much greater effect on memory and intelligence than fish.

More on this story from New Scientist, WebMD "The FDA-EPA advisory warns pregnant women not to eat shark, swordfish, king mackerel, or tilefish. These are the fish more likely to have high mercury levels..."It is very clear that omega-3 fatty acids are very important for brain development," " Newsweek, FoodConsumer.


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Diet during pregnancy can change genes for generations

Maternal Diet During Pregnancy Can Impact Offspring For Generations, Study Shows ScienceDaily 12/28/06 "A new study by scientists at Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI) is the first to show that a mother's diet during pregnancy influences the health of her grandchildren by changing the behavior of a specific gene...In their experiments, the scientists fed some Avy mice a standard lab diet based on common foods consumed by humans. Other mice were fed this same diet supplemented with common nutritional supplements including folate, choline, betaine, vitamin B12, zinc and methionine...The results showed that the supplements changed the behavior of the agouti gene in the first generation of pups, shifting their coats towards a brown color, and had the same effect on pups born in the next generation to mice that were not exposed to the supplemented diet..."Although researchers have long known that there is a connection between a mother's diet and her children's health this is the first case in which the relationship between a mother's diet and the biology of her grandchildren has been mapped to a single gene and a defined diet," said David Martin, M.D., Scientist at CHORI. "Our work provides convincing evidence of complex transgenerational effects of nutrition on health, and provides an experimental model for exploring these relationships in detail."..." it is possible that the maternal diet could have implications that stretch over decades, perhaps even centuries.""

Epigenetics like this makes you wonder if whole sections of a country had their diet changed for a time in the past and their children changed a bit, would anyone notice? With modern industrialized food, fast food, crap snacks etc, and exposure to all sorts of man made chemicals that sometimes have an effect on hormones and maybe genes... would we know if we were changing? These might not be such crazy questions.

The benefits to the mice getting the supplements is that they get less diabetes and cancer. So that's a plus (like folate, B-12 and choline for pregnant moms) but for humanity we have only begun to scratch the surface of what foods do what to genes and what chemicals in our environment might methylate certain genes. Like I said before in a previous post, is there any scientific field as hot as epigenetics?

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Pregnancy and Alcohol

I was disappointed at the rather unscientific and irresponsible article in the NYtimes about alcohol and pregnancy that seems to give a view that moderate drinking while pregnant is safe. The author appears to have missed the relevance of a lot of recent research - most of which is found in New Scientist 6/29/06 (pay article) titled "Sobering news for pregnant women" where they catalog the research showing that even light drinking has the potential to alter the development of the fetus.

If you insist on drinking then take choline during pregnancy which seems to offer some protection against the neuronal apoptosis that alcohol can induce in the fetal brain during the 2nd trimester.

"Peter Hepper at Queen's University, Belfast, UK, examined the movements of fetuses scanned on ultrasound in response to a noise stimulus. Having asked women about their drinking habits, they compared the responses of fetuses exposed to low levels of alcohol - between 1 and 6 British units per week, each containing 10 millilitres of alcohol - and those exposed to none. When tested between 20 and 35 weeks, the fetuses exposed to alcohol tended to show a "startle response" usually found only in the earlier stages of pregnancy, when the nervous system is less developed"

"When Ed Riley and colleagues at San Diego State University in California looked at children's brains using magnetic resonance imaging, they found obvious changes in the brain structure of children whose mothers drank very heavily, but also some changes in children born to moderate drinkers. For example, there were abnormalities in the corpus callosum, the tract of fibres connecting the right and left hemispheres of the brain. The greater the abnormality, the worse the children performed on a verbal learning task."

"John Olney, a neuroscientist at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, has examined the impact of alcohol on developing rodent brains as a model for what happens in humans. Six years ago Olney and others showed that alcohol causes neurons in the developing rat brain to undergo programmed cell death, or apoptosis"

The research by Olney shows that the timing of alcohol has an effect. The first trimester affects facial development and other physical features and gestures, the second trimester affects different levels of brain function depending again when the alcohol hits and what part of the brain is forming. Olney believes that even small amounts of alcohol (50mg per 100 ml of blood) can potentially kill 20 million neurons in the fetus. In the third trimester alcohol can throw off circadian rhythms in the offspring. So as children they sleep poorly and are prone to a host of other psychiatric conditions like depression. Based on what Olney has seen in his research he thinks it would be safest to abstain.

It's possible that for some women a small amount of alcohol over an extended time on a full stomach might have little or no impact on a fetus. But how would you know if you metabolize alcohol in the right way, or that you ate enough to blunt the effect of the alcohol, or that you drank slowly enough for it not to effect the fetus, or that you didn't go over the level at which neurons die in the fetus? Is it worth the risk if only to partake in a brief cultural ritual, or to momentarily feel more social?

The BBC has covered this 9/18/02 "Professor Peter Hepper, of Queen's University, Belfast, said that there was a growing body of evidence linking even moderate alcohol use in pregnancy to deficits in children.
He said: "If it was proven that drinking any amount of alcohol in pregnancy caused you to be born with the tip of your finger missing - something that would hardly affect your life at all - then it would be banned instantly."

Of course brain damage is much harder to measure... and so likely goes unnoticed except for dramatic cases.

More here, here, here and here

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Prenatal DHA for Boost In Babies Intelligence

DHA supplements at pregnancy boost babies' intelligence NutraIngredients 9/1/03 "Researchers in Norway examining the effects of DHA on mental development found that those children whose mothers had a higher intake of DHA during pregnancy scored higher on intelligence and achievement tests at four years of age than those whose mothers took fatty acids not containing DHA...The team found that children born to mothers who had taken the cod liver oil during pregnancy and lactation scored significantly higher (approximately 4.1 points) on the Mental Processing Composite of the K-ABC test compared to children whose mothers had received corn oil"

Full Research Report

The researchers used about 1200mg of DHA daily. This is significantly more than usually recommended. There's a hint in the research that even more is better, but sheesh, how many capsules do these poor women have to swallow?

So again, Choline, DHA and Exercise are potent brain boosters that apparently last a lifetime. Why these aren't getting more press can only be explained in the past by the lack of enough children being born to mothers who had enough of those three.

More on choline here.

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Prenatal Choline For A Smarter Baby and Adult

Nutrient during pregnancy 'super-charges' brain NewScientist 3/12/04 "Taking a nutrient called choline during pregnancy could "super-charge" children's brains for life, suggests a study in rats."..."due to having bigger brain cells in vital areas"..."Choline, a member of the vitamin B family, is found in egg yolks, liver and other meats "..."US Institute of Medicine added choline to the list of essential nutrients, particularly for pregnant women, in its 2003 recommendations"..."The neurons of rats born to mothers given extra choline fired electrical signals more rapidly and for longer periods, indicating a capacity to communicate more easily"..."Previous work by Steven Zeisel at the University of North Carolina has shown choline alters a crucial gene by adding a methyl group on to it. This switches off the gene, CDKN-3, which usually inhibits cell division in the memory regions of the brain"
Prenatal Choline Supplements Make Brain Cells Larger, Faster
"The implications for humans are profound, said the researchers, because the collective data on choline suggests that simply augmenting the diets of pregnant women with this one nutrient could affect their children's lifelong learning and memory. In theory, choline could boost cognitive function, diminish age-related memory decline, and reduce the brain's vulnerability toxic insults"


This is very promising research not only for the brain boost the child/adult gets but also the ability for the brain to resist age related cognitive decline. It appears that the crucial time for a boost in choline is in the second half of pregnancy. But since choline is important for the development of the brain throughout pregnancy and the 1st year of the child - it appears that choline should probably be taken early on and through the 1st year where it will pass through lactation. A study in Denver commencing soon will be providing 900mg of choline throughout pregnancy. This appears to be well within safe levels for the mother and child and should allow for some methylation of the cdkn3 gene so that a boost to memory centers occurs.

The Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences recommends 450mg of choline for pregnant women and 550mg for lactating women. But the key question is at what levels does choline methylate, or turn off the cdkn3 gene that limits stem cell proliferation in the hippocampus. The studies on rodents seem to use 3 or more times the amount of their regular intake of choline. The research so far seems to indicate that the more choline that is ingested the greater the gene silencing that occurs - the more certain sections of the brain are enhanced.

It doesn't appear that an optimal dose for humans has been set, although I suspect that lead researchers in this field have a general idea. As I understand it,1-2gms a day is a level where apparently there are no side effects for most people. 3-5gms a day has been determined to be the upper limit of most people - beyond that is nausea and other side effects.

Other proven brain boosters during the prenatal period are:

DHA (docosahexanoic acid ) from fish oil or from microalgae.

Exercise

One thing to consider if supplementing with choline is what form of choline you are taking and then find out what percentage of that form is elemental choline (the usable form).

Eggs seem like an ideal source of choline, but eggs apparently range from 125mg of choline to 350mg. Why? I have no idea. Diet? Lifestyle of chicken? Genes?

More info here , here and here .

Update: 2008.05.07 The latest research on choline and IQ here. The thumbnail sketch is that choline in normal concentrations does not seem to affect IQ up to the age of 5. It does not address supplemental choline. What remains to be seen is whether elevated levels of choline, beyond normal concentrations, have an effect in humans as it appears to have in rodents. Also this is only research up to age 5. It will be interesting to see if there is any differences at age 10 regarding those children with lowest prenatal choline levels vs those with the highest.


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