German Lang. Media: Two Faces of Folic acid; Germany takes different path
Folic acid is a supplement in flour by law in the US since 1998. And only two years ago, the German Society for Nutrition (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ernährung, DGE) demanded this be law in the European Union, too. But now experts look at it differently. Some studies have shown that too much folic acid is correlated with colon cancer – and even worse, the predicted and expected decline in neural tube defects in newborns, the reason for the supplement, couldn’t be demonstrated in the US. Even the EFSA (the European Food and Safety Authority) opposes any plans to make folic acid a regular supplement of flour.
All this is put together by Anke Brodmerkel in a comprehensive piece for the science section of the Frankfurter Rundschau, which is sharing the article with the Berliner Zeitung (cost savings by the publisher of both newspapers, DuMont Verlag). Brodmerkel reports the difficulties of folic acid supplementation, because unwanted high doses of the vitamin seem to have bad outcomes. She cites an Australian study, where the offspring of women, who took folic acid late in gestation, had a 30 percent higher percentage of getting asthma (But she didn’t tell, whether these women had higher doses than 400 microgramm per day?). Also, high doses of folic acid seem to cause colon cancer, according to an expert at University of Toronto. But, confusingly, young adults taking folic acid seem to be protected from colon, lung or breast cancer.
To sum up, it’s a bad idea to sprinkle folic acid over the whole population without any control, how much the individual man or woman gets at a certain time point in development, because the vitamin can cause good and bad in different situations. It makes one uncomfortable to read, that it is still not regulated, how much folic acid should be allowed in milk or granola bars.
What I missed while reading the article is a paragraph or two about the science behind the debate and the studies. One wants explanation and theory why folic acid might act so differently in different tissues and at different time points in development. The reader could have get an idea of differential gene regulation, triggered by a dietary supplement: Folic acid is involved in a mechanism called DNA-methylation, which helps switch off genes. This means, too much folic acid could turn off tumor suppressor genes, e.g., so that they can not prevent the progression of cancer anymore.
Some time ago, the Ärzteblatt reported about a Norwegian folic acid study with 7000 participants (published in JAMA). The group, who took folic acid during the 39 month study period developed a 21 percent higher risk to develop cancer (especially lung cancer), and the cancer mortality was raised by 38 percent. The goal of the study to prevent the patients from cardiac attack by adding folic acid to their diet was not met.
- Sascha Karberg
