Trial reportAlcoholism, clinical and experimental research2021
Maternal choline supplementation mitigates alcohol exposure effects on neonatal brain volumes.
Trial report in Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 49 citations in OpenAlex.
- Choline During Pregnancy and Child Neurodevelopment: A Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials and Observational Studies.Nutrients · 2025Pooled it
- Choline enhances elicited imitation memory performance in preschool children with prenatal alcohol exposure: a cumulative report of 3 randomized controlled trials.The American journal of clinical nutrition · 2025Trial
- Long-term follow-up of a randomized controlled trial of choline for neurodevelopment in fetal alcohol spectrum disorder: corpus callosum white matter microstructure and neurocognitive outcomes.Journal of neurodevelopmental disorders · 2022Trial
- Choline status and related health outcomes in humans: A scoping review.Nutrition and health · 2026Article
- The Gut-Brain Axis in Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD): Why the Gut Shapes Behavior, Depression, and Self-Injurious Behavior in Children with Prenatal Alcohol Exposure-A Narrative Review with a Proposal for Staged Nutritional and Microbiological Intervention.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Review
- Article
- The Effect of Maternal Choline Intake on Offspring Cognition in Adolescence: Protocol for a 14-year Follow-Up of a Randomized Controlled Feeding Trial.JMIR research protocols · 2025Article
- Effects of alcohol on the transcriptome, methylome and metabolome of in vitro gastrulating human embryonic cells.Disease models & mechanisms · 2025Article
- Alcohol Exposure May Increase Prenatal Choline Needs Through Redirection of Choline into Lipid Synthesis Rather than Methyl Donation.Metabolites · 2025Article
- Regional hippocampal thinning and gyrification abnormalities and associated cognition in children with prenatal alcohol exposure.Journal of neurodevelopmental disorders · 2025Article
- Prenatal substance exposure and infant neurodevelopment: a review of magnetic resonance imaging studies.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Review
- Substance-Induced Psychiatric Disorders, Epigenetic and Microbiome Alterations, and Potential for Therapeutic Interventions.Brain sciences · 2024Review
- BOOSTING SKULL-STRIPPING PERFORMANCE FOR PEDIATRIC BRAIN IMAGES.Proceedings. IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging · 2024Article
- Identification of Genes Responding to Iron or Choline Treatment for Early-Life Iron Deficiency in the Male Rat Hippocampal Transcriptomes.The Journal of nutrition · 2024Article
- Article
- Novel Interventions on Comorbidities in Patients with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD): An Integrative Review.Biomedicines · 2024Review
- Nutrient Supplementation during the Prenatal Period in Substance-Using Mothers: A Narrative Review of the Effects on Offspring Development.Nutrients · 2023Review
- Basal forebrain cholinergic neurons are vulnerable in a mouse model of Down syndrome and their molecular fingerprint is rescued by maternal choline supplementation.FASEB journal : official publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology · 2023Article
- Mitigating the detrimental developmental impact of early fetal alcohol exposure using a maternal methyl donor-enriched diet.FASEB journal : official publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology · 2023Article
- The role of maternal choline, folate and one-carbon metabolism in mediating the impact of prenatal alcohol exposure on placental and fetal development.The Journal of physiology · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
12 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundPrenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) is associated with smaller regional and global brain volumes. In rats, gestational choline supplementation mitigates adverse developmental effects of ethanol exposure. Our recent randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled maternal choline supplementation trial showed improved somatic and functional outcomes in infants at 6.5 and 12 months postpartum. Here, we examined whether maternal choline supplementation protected the newborn brain from PAE-related volume reductions and, if so, whether these volume changes were associated with improved infant recognition memory.
methodsFifty-two infants born to heavy-drinking women who had participated in a choline supplementation trial during pregnancy underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging with a multi-echo FLASH protocol on a 3T Siemens Allegra MRI (median age = 2.8 weeks postpartum). Subcortical regions were manually segmented. Recognition memory was assessed at 12 months on the Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence (FTII). We examined the effects of choline on regional brain volumes, whether choline-related volume increases were associated with higher FTII scores, and the degree to which the regional volume increases mediated the effects of choline on the FTII.
resultsUsable MRI data were acquired in 50 infants (choline: n = 27; placebo: n = 23). Normalized volumes were larger in six of 12 regions in the choline than placebo arm (t ≥ 2.05, p ≤ 0.05) and were correlated with the degree of maternal choline adherence (β ≥ 0.28, p ≤ 0.04). Larger right putamen and corpus callosum were related to higher FTII scores (r = 0.36, p = 0.02) with a trend toward partial mediation of the choline effect on recognition memory.
conclusionsHigh-dose choline supplementation during pregnancy mitigated PAE-related regional volume reductions, with larger volumes associated with improved 12-month recognition memory. These results provide the first evidence that choline may be neuroprotective against PAE-related brain structural deficits in humans.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.