text_1: Fish Oil Pills During Pregnancy Might Mean Stronger, Healthier Kids
text_2: This HealthDay story describes a study published in the British Medical Journal that looked at whether pregnant women who took fish oil supplements in their third trimester produced healthier children based on their growth statistics and body mass index, compared to mothers who did not. The study was a high-quality randomized controlled trial of the effects of fish oil during pregnancy on asthma in children, which looked at effects on body mass index as a secondary outcome measure. The story included multiple independent sources to provide perspective, and it included a few key details about the study. While it provided the scope of the benefit of taking fish oil, it could have gone a step further to explain if those measured benefits really mean much for children’s health. There is great interest in understanding the effects of interventions during pregnancy on the health of the offspring, but such studies are difficult to conduct, since assessing outcomes that occur years following the pregnancy can be a challenge. Although the effects of fish oil supplements on children’s growth was not the primary intention of this trial, the results do suggest that mothers who take the supplements during their last trimester have children whose body mass index and body measurements for up to six years of age are better than the children of mothers who didn’t take the supplements. If a simple supplement can actually lead to that kind of improvement in children’s that would be an important finding for public health.