Posted on: Tuesday, August 19, 2003

Folic acid linked to depression

By Garret Condon
Hartford (Conn.) Courant

Depressed? Maybe you need more liver, chickpeas, fortified breakfast cereal or a multivitamin.

All are good sources of folate, a B vitamin that occurs naturally in many foods. The synthetic version is called folic acid. It has been added to some foods since the late 1990s to help prevent certain birth defects. The current recommendation for pregnant women is 600 micrograms per day. Women who lack adequate folate around the time of conception are more likely to have a child with birth defects and are at higher risk for low-weight and premature babies, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Some studies have shown that supplemental folate also helps depressed people.

Martha Morris, an epidemiologist with the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, and four colleagues studied data on nearly 3,000 people, ages 15 to 39. They found that those who had experienced major depression had lower concentrations of folate in their bloodstream and red blood cells than those who had never been depressed. In addition, those with chronic low-level depression — also known as dysthymia — had lower red blood cell levels than the non-depressed.

Morris said that folate levels were not particularly low among people who said they were currently depressed. "Low folate didn't occur until some months after the symptoms had disappeared," she said. "It does tend to suggest that low folate status is a consequence of depression." She noted that low levels of folate can cause symptoms like fatigue, which is often part and parcel of depression. Improving such conditions using folate or folic acid, she said, might help lift the spirits.

The study, published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, was accompanied by an editorial written by Dr. Ingvar Bjelland and two colleagues from the University of Bergen, Norway. They said scientists do not yet know which patients should receive folate supplements, in what dose or for how long.

The information analyzed by Morris and her associates was gathered before folic acid was added to many foods. Morris said that she's not sure what result she'd get from the post-fortification population. The National Institutes of Health reports that adult diets now contain recommended amounts of either folate or folic acid. In other words, most Americans are probably getting enough. The Institute of Medicine's Food and Nutrition Board recommends 400 micrograms, or 0.4 milligrams, per day for adult men and women, 600 micrograms for pregnant women and 500 for lactating women.