Prenatal Intake of Vitamins and Allergic Outcomes in the Offspring: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Allergic diseases have seen a rise worldwide, with children suffering the highest burden. Thus, early prevention of allergic diseases is a public health priority.

OBJECTIVE: To synthesize the evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) assessing the effect of vitamin interventions during pregnancy on developing allergic diseases in offspring.

METHODS: We searched CENTRAL, MEDLINE, SCOPUS, World Health Organization's International Clinical Trials Registration, E-theses, and Web of Science. Study quality was evaluated using Cochrane's risk of bias tool. Included RCTs had a minimum of 1-month follow-up postgestation.

RESULTS: A total of 5 RCTs met the inclusion criteria, including 2456 children who used vitamins C + E (1 study), vitamin C (1 study), and vitamin D (3 studies) compared with placebo/control. Two studies were judged to have a high risk of bias for performance bias or a high rate of loss to follow-up. All were rated as low risk of bias for blinding of outcome assessment. We did not perform meta-analysis with vitamin C or vitamin C + E studies due to high heterogeneity between the 2 included studies. However, we did conduct a meta-analysis with trials on vitamin D (including 1493 children) and the results showed an association between the prenatal intake of vitamin D and the risk of developing recurrent wheeze in offspring (relative risk (RR), 0.812; 95% CI, 0.67-0.98).

CONCLUSIONS: The current evidence suggests that prenatal supplementation of vitamin D might have a beneficial effect on recurrent wheezing in children. Longer-term follow-up of these studies is needed to ascertain whether this observed effect is sustained. There is lack of evidence on the effect of other vitamins for the prevention of respiratory and/or allergic outcomes.