Folic Acid and Vitamin B12 Deficiencies Tied to Higher Blood Pressure in Children, Study Reveals

The research found that deficiencies in folic acid and vitamin B12 are associated with higher BP levels in younger populations. The findings, published in the Journal of Human Hypertension, confirmed the importance of maintaining high levels of FA and vitamin B12 in childhood by diet or supplementation.

Xiaohua Liang, Key Laboratory of Children’s Important Organ Development and Diseases of Chongqing Municipal Health Commission, Chongqing, China, and colleagues aimed to investigate the connection between serum levels of FA or vitamin B12 and elevated BP in children and adolescents.

For this purpose, the researchers designed a nested case-control study and a cohort study to examine the relationship between serum folic acid (FA) or vitamin B12 (VB12) levels and elevated BP in children and adolescents. All participants were primary school students. The nested case-control study involved 326 subjects (116 with hypertension and 210 without) drawn from an established cohort. Additionally, the cohort study included 270 participants free of hypertension at baseline and was followed up in 2019.

The study led to the following findings:

• FA and VB12 levels were lower in the elevated BP group than in the control group, and homocysteine levels were higher than those in the control group.
• In the elevated BP group, overweight/obese children had lower FA than overweight/obese children in the normal BP group.
• FA was positively correlated with high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and Apo lipoprotein A (APOA) but negatively correlated with triglyceride (TG). FA was significantly correlated with elevated BP in children and adolescents (β = –0.353), after adjusting VB12, and homocysteine (HCY), and the interaction effect of FA*HCY was significant.
• Both systolic and diastolic BP levels were statistically lower in the FA high exposure group than in the FA low exposure group in the cohort study.

"This study discovered a correlation between folic acid and vitamin B12 deficiencies in childhood and elevated blood pressure levels, suggesting that these deficiencies may influence BP through the regulation of lipid levels. The findings underscore the importance of maintaining adequate levels of FA and vitamin B12 during childhood, either through diet or supplementation," the researchers concluded.

Reference:

Liang, X., Huang, D., Bi, Y., He, Y., Mao, T., Liu, Q., Hu, G., Tong, J., Chen, L., Wang, Y., An, X., Jiang, X., & Tahir, M. F. (2024). The impact of folic acid/VB12 deficiency on essential hypertension in children and adolescents: From a nested case-control and a cohort study. Journal of Human Hypertension, 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41371-024-00955-w