London - Daily doses of multivitamins can reduce foetal deaths and premature births and improve the immune systems of pregnant women infected with the HIV virus, researchers said today in the British medical journal, the Lancet.
A four-year study of 1,075 HIV-positive pregnant women in Tanzania showed that vitamin supplements reduced foetal deaths, low birth weights and severe preterm births by approximately 40 per cent. For the 90 per cent of the world's 30 million HIV sufferers who live in the developing world, the study could have a profound impact.