ADVISING women to increase their intake of folic acid to reduce the risk of birth defects does not work, an international study has shown. In nine European countries and Israel, government recommendations to take extra folic acid have not resulted in any reduction in neural tube defects, of which the best known is spina bifida. By contrast, fortifying food with folic acid -- a policy adopted in America and Canada but rejected by the UK -- does work. The number of neural tube defects in Canada has fallen by more than three quarters since folic acid fortification began there in 1996. The new study, published in the British Medical Journal, looked at the incidence of such defects in Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, England and Wales, Ireland, Hungary, three regions of France, two regions of Italy, Portugal and Israel.
