Researchers set out to see if women who smoked during pregnancy could benefit from vitamin C supplementation and what effect it might have on the respiratory health of their babies.
Two studies conducted years apart have shown both the short- and long-term benefits of vitamin C on the children of women who smoked during their pregnancies. The first study, published in 2017, randomized pregnant women for vitamin C or a placebo, then tested their babies at three and 12 months to evaluate their lung function.
The researchers state that 12 percent of American women cannot quit smoking while pregnant, resulting in more than 450,000 infants born yearly who are exposed to smoke. They continue, saying that smoking during pregnancy is the largest preventable cause of respiratory illnesses in children, which include wheezing and asthma, and that recent studies have shown that vitamin C has a protective effect on the lung function of offspring exposed to in-utero smoke in both a nonhuman primate and initial human trial….