'Only 6% of pregnant teenagers' take folic acid

As little as 6% of expectant mothers in their teenage years were taking folic acid supplements to protect their unborn child from developing birth defects, experts have found.

Researchers from Queen Mary University spoke to thousands of pregnant women at ante-natal clinics for a 13 year period from 1999 to 2012 and found:

• Some 40% of older women aged 35 to 39 followed guidelines on folic acid.
• There were strong ethnic variations in women who took folic acid; only 17% of Afro-Caribbean women, 20% of South Asian women and 25% of East Asian women taking folic acid, compared with 35% of white Caucasian women.

• More women took folic acid once they discovered they were pregnant, the proportion rising from 45% to 62% between the periods looked at in the study.

Read: Pregnant women failing to take folic acid, experts warn