Vitamin Supplements May Improve Infant Growth
CUERNAVACA, Mexico--Based on the hypothesis that micronutrient deficiencies retard infant growth, researchers here studied infants (8 to 14 months) to ascertain whether a multivitamin supplement could enhance growth. Infants were randomly assigned to placebo and supplement groups, with the supplement group receiving a multivitamin that contained vitamins A, D, E, K, C, B1, B6 and B12, riboflavin, niacin, biotin, folic acid, pantothenic acid, iron, zinc, iodine, copper, manganese and selenium.
After taking supplements six times per day for an average of 12.2 months, the infants in the supplement group who were less than 12 months old grew in length significantly more than the placebo group. However, this increased growth was not noted in infants who were older than one year. Researchers concluded that improving micronutrient intakes should promote growth in nutrient-deficient infants (Am J Clin Nutr, 74,5:657-63, 2001) (www.ajcn.org).
In a similar study (J Nutrition, 131:2860-65, 2001) (www.nutrition.org), 478 Indonesian infants were studied to determine how supplementation of iron and zinc, alone or combined, would affect growth. Four groups of children were supplemented for six months with iron (10 mg/d), zinc (10 mg/d), iron and zinc, or placebo. While researchers learned that iron plus zinc supplementation reduced the prevalence of anemia more effectively than iron alone, there was no noted difference between the groups in terms of growth.
