Vitamin C Supplements may Improve Lung Function for Newborns with Smoking Mothers

For pregnant women with a nicotine addiction, a recent study shows that vitamin C supplements could help to improve lung function for newborns and even decrease the incidence of wheezing for infants through 1 year.

It's estimated that more than 50 percent of smokers who become pregnant continue to carry the habit full term, corresponding to 12 percent of all pregnancies. 

As smoking during pregnancy can dramatically disrupt lung development for the future child, infants born to smokers typically show decreased signs of pulmonary function, with respiratory issues that may even require hospitalization.

Yet researchers set out to determine how vitamin C supplements could block some of the drug's harmful effects and their influence on lung function.

Lead study author Cindy T. Mcvoy, M.D. M.C.R., of Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, and colleagues, randomly assigned patients to either receive vitamin C supplements or a placebo, including 76 newborns of pregnant smokers and 159 newborns of pregnant smokers.

Researchers discovered that newborns of women who received the vitamin C supplements showed improved measures of pulmonary function and decreased their wheezing risk through the first year of life.  

"Although smoking cessation is the foremost goal, most pregnant smokers continue to smoke, supporting the need for a pharmacologic intervention," the authors noted, via a press release. Other studies have demonstrated that reduced pulmonary function in offspring of smokers continues into childhood and up to age 21 years. "This emphasizes the important opportunity of in-utero intervention. Individuals who begin life with decreased PFT measures may be at increased risk for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease."

"Vitamin C supplementation in pregnant smokers may be an inexpensive and simple approach (with continued smoking cessation counseling) to decrease some of the effects of smoking in pregnancy on newborn pulmonary function and ultimately infant respiratory morbidities, but further study is required," the researchers concluded.

More information regarding the findings can be seen via JAMA.