Conditions: Pregnancy
Keywords: DHA childhood development
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 190
Healthy volunteers: yes

Brief summary:
This is a continuation study to KUDOS (NCT00266825). The purpose of this study is to follow-up with participants on the original study to determine if the effects of increasing DHA intake during pregnancy increase cognitive development in 2 to 6 year-old children.

Detailed description:
Numerous trials show benefits of postnatal DHA supplementation for visual acuity. There are also numerous observational(not intervention)studies that link higher maternal DHA status during pregnancy to higher cognitive function. Intervention studies that increase DHA exposure during fetal life and that measure cognitive development of infants are lacking; and no study to date has systematically followed children whose mothers were randomly assigned to DHA supplementation to school age with regular 6 month assessments of age-appropriate assessments of cognitive development. The absence of such studies is a serious limitation because there is evidence that differences in cognitive function due to such interventions do not become robust until around age 4 years. Women in the US consume low amounts of DHA compared to other world populations, and this likely means less DHA transfer to the fetus than in many other populations. Prenatal DHA exposure may be more important than postnatal exposure, because animal studies show critical windows for brain DHA accumulation in relation to effects on neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine and GABA.

Arms:
arm 1: None arm 2: None

Interventions: intervention 1: DHA intervention 2: Placebo Capsule
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: 600 mg DHA capsule intervention 2: 600 mg of Soybean Oil and Corn Oil, which does not contain any DHA

Protocol document: