A new commentary published in The Lancet Global Health called for greater public health intervention to address common inadequacies in micronutrients worldwide.

The commentary addresses a recent study that used a new approach to modeling analysis to estimate micronutrient intake. “Using a globally harmonized set of age-specific and sex-specific nutrient requirements, we then applied these distributions to publicly available data from the Global Dietary Database on modeled median intakes of 15 micronutrients for 34 age-sex groups from 185 countries, to estimate the prevalence of nutrient intakes for 99.3% of the global population.”

More than 5 billion people globally don’t consume enough iodine, vitamin E, and calcium, and more than 4 billion people have inadequate iron, riboflavin, folate, and vitamin C. Women were more likely than men to have inadequate intakes of iodine, vitamin B12, iron, selenium, calcium, riboflavin, vitamin E, and folate.

“The results highlight the widespread nature of insufficient micronutrient intake and emphasize the need for targeted public health interventions to address these gaps, particularly in regions with high inadequacy rates,” the authors of the commentary wrote. “Overall, this study provides a groundbreaking assessment of global micronutrient intake inadequacies, highlighting important gaps and the need for targeted interventions. This work also emphasizes the importance of improving data collection methods, particularly in under-represented regions of the world such as Africa, to inform effective and equitable health policies.”  

Folate in the Spotlight

Gnosis by Lesaffre, a supplier of an activated folate ingredient called Quatrefolic, noted that folate is essential for women of reproductive age, as it plays a vital role in DNA synthesis, cell division, and proper neurological development of the fetus, especially given that 8% of pregnancies experience complications. Women with impaired maternal and fetal homocysteine metabolism, along with low levels of active folate in the bloodstream, are associated with significant complications, such as fetal neural tube defects, preeclampsia, and placental abruption, as well as recurrent pregnancy loss.

Other research presented this year at the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) also found that folate inadequacy risks are elevated in overweight or obese women, resulting in potential metabolic and cognitive challenges for mother and child. The researchers linked adequate folate intake and glycemic control to reduced birth defects and other adverse outcomes.  

“The high number of people, especially women, living with folate inadequacy is both surprising and somewhat disheartening, considering how many countries have implemented folate fortification programs,” said Jean Francois Jeanne, manager of Gnosis’ substantiation team. “At the same time, this substantiates the need for products containing adequate folate amounts, in its active form 5-MTHF, to ensure improved intake across all populations.”