Preventing Fetal Body and Brain Size Reduction in Low-income Smoking Mothers: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Smoking during pregnancy remains a common practice despite smoking cessation programs offered to mothers. Only 20-40% of women quit smoking during pregnancy which implies that a majority of smokers continue smoking despite the associated feto-infant morbidity and mortality. It is therefore important to identify ways and means of protecting these infants as they grow and develop during intrauterine life. In this study, we propose to assess the utility of higher-strength folic acid (4mg) combined with smoking cessation programs as compared to standard of care (smoking cessation program and low-strength (0.8mg) folic acid) in reducing the level of morbidity (specifically fetal body and brain size) sustained by infants of smokers