Babies are likely to have stronger muscles if their mother had high levels of Vitamin D in their body while they were pregnant, according to a study reported by Counsel and Health.
Vitamin D, which is commonly sourced from sunlight and can be found in select foods, is essential for bone health because it "enhances the body's ability to absorb calcium and phosphate," Counsel and Heal reported.
Researchers from the Medical Research Council Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit (MRC LEU) found that higher levels of vitamin D in the mother during pregnancy correlated to higher grip strength and a slightly higher muscle mass in their children.
"These associations between maternal vitamin D and offspring muscle strength may well have consequences for later health; muscle strength peaks in young adulthood before declining in older age and low grip strength in adulthood has been associated with poor health outcomes including diabetes, falls and fractures," lead researcher Dr. Nicholas Harvey, Senior Lecturer at the MRC LEU at the University of Southampton, commented according to Medical Xpress.
For the study, scientists measured vitamin D levels in 678 women in the later stages of pregnancy. When their children were four years old, researchers measured the offspring's grip strength and muscle mass.
They found that the higher the levels of vitamin D in the mother, the higher the grip strength of the child, with an additional, "but less pronounced association between mother's vitamin D and child's muscle mass."
"It is likely that the greater muscle strength observed at four years of age in children born to mothers with higher vitamin D levels will track into adulthood, and so potentially help to reduce the burden of illness associated with loss of muscle mass in old age," Harvey added.
The study has been published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
