Choline has been named as an important supplement which may help to guard against the mental illness, schizophrenia. This is not something that you can just start taking when you feel that you may be at risk of the symptoms, however, this is something that mothers can do to protect the wellbeing of their children long before they are even born.
Research has shown that pregnant women taking a daily dose of choline may help to protect their unborn child from developing schizophrenia in later life. The last two trimesters of pregnancy are particularly key times for this, and the supplement can then be carried on into infancy, to set the child up for a life of good mental wellness.
Since schizophrenia commonly does not manifest itself until later life, the efficacy of the supplement was tested using one factor which appears to be common to all schizophrenia patients: poor sensory processing. This means that some sounds (such as repeated noises) which are normally filtered out are audible to those with schizophrenia.
Researchers gave a placebo drug to half of the pregnant mothers involved in the trial, and the other half were given 3,600 milligrams of choline each morning and 2,700 milligrams of choline every evening. Following the birth of the children, half were given a placebo (matched with the mother) and half were given 1,000 milligrams of choline per day.
EEG sensors were then placed in babies’ heads during sleep, to measure their sensitivity to certain sounds. It was found that 86 percent of the babies who had been given choline inhibited the noise of repeated sounds, as opposed to just 43 percent of those who had received the placebo.
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