Dr. Mihai Mehedint works at UNC Nutrition Research Institute, which discovered a link between choline and blood vessel development in the brains of mouse pups.

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By Emily Ford

eford@salisburypost.com

KANNAPOLIS — Pregnant mice with diets lacking the essential nutrient choline had fetuses with fewer brain blood vessels, according to a study at the N.C. Research Campus.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Nutrition Research Institute in Kannapolis conducted the mouse study.

The findings, published in the journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,” could be important to women.

“Most pregnant women in the United States have diets that are choline deficient,” Dr. Steve Zeisel, director of the UNC Nutrition Research Institute, said in a statement. “Only 14 percent of expecting mothers in the U.S. are eating enough choline in their diet.”

Pregnant women with the lowest amount of choline in their diets are four times more likely to have babies with birth defects than are women who eat the most choline.

Choline-rich foods include milk, egg yolks, soybeans, beef, chicken, peanuts, wheat germ, flax seeds, sesame seeds, potatoes, cauliflower, lentils and oats.

To test whether choline directly affects fetal blood vessel formation, Zeisel and colleagues including Dr. Mihai Mehedint fed choline-deficient diets to pregnant mice and then examined the brains of the pups.

The researchers report that choline-deficient fetal mice had fewer hippocampal blood vessels than the control group, which was fed a normal diet.

The choline-deficient diet also correlated to high levels of two growth factors that regulate new blood vessel formation.

Previous studies link diets low in choline to a decreased production of nerve cells in the brain of fetal mice. Choline regulates the genes that make stem cells divide.

Contact Emily Ford at 704-797-4264.