Does more vitamin D in pregnancy make children smarter?

A recent Danish study found that children whose mothers took higher doses of vitamin D during late pregnancy showed slightly improved verbal and visual memory at age ten, per The Conversation. The mothers received seventy micrograms of vitamin D daily—seven times the standard UK dose—from week twenty-four of pregnancy through one week after birth. But the findings warrant caution: the improvements were modest, there was no effect on intelligence or attention, cognition wasn't the study's original focus, and researchers couldn't determine whether the benefit came from pregnancy-stage exposure or postnatal factors. The participants were nearly all white, limiting how broadly the results apply. Current NHS guidance calls for pregnant women to take ten micrograms of vitamin D daily from October through March, and experts emphasize that women should not increase their dose seeking better outcomes without consulting their healthcare provider—stronger, purpose-designed trials are needed before any guidance changes.

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