Who can have a baby with a neural tube defect (NTD) in the United States?
Sixty million women are of childbearing age in the United States; all those who are capable of becoming pregnant are at risk for having an NTD-affected pregnancy. It is not possible to predict which women will have a pregnancy affected by an NTD. Ninety-five percent of NTDs occur in women with no personal or family history of NTDs. However, some risk factors are known: • An NTD-affected pregnancy increases a woman’s chance to have another NTD-affected pregnancy by approximately twenty times • Maternal insulin-dependent diabetes • Anti-seizure medication use • Medically diagnosed obesity • High temperatures in early pregnancy (prolonged fevers and hot tub use, for example) • Race/ethnicity (NTDs are more common among white women than black women and more common among Hispanic women than non-Hispanic women) • Lower socio-economic status 5. Can women get too much folic acid? Folic acid has no known toxic level. If you were to eat a bowl of fully fortified cereal (400 micrograms), take 400
