A study by scientists from Masaryk University showed that children of mothers with higher vitamin B12 intake during pregnancy were able to communicate better at one and a half years old, for example, using gestures, simple words, and understanding simple instructions. At the age of 8, they showed better results in verbal intelligence tests.
“Vitamin B12 is essential for the proper development of the child’s brain and the functioning of the human body. However, the demands for its intake increase during pregnancy. With the increasing popularity of plant-based diets, it may be insufficiently represented in the diet of pregnant women,” says the lead author of the study, Eliška Hrežová.
Its sources are exclusively animal-based foods such as meat, fish, eggs, milk, and dairy products. Speech development is very important – it affects not only communication but also the ability to learn and integrate into society. Language skills significantly shape broader cognitive abilities and are associated with later academic success. A lack of vitamin B12 in prenatal development can thus manifest into adulthood.
To conduct the analysis, scientists used data from the ELSPAC study from the 1990s, which involved more than 5,000 mothers and their children from Brno and Znojmo.
“To assess vitamin B12 intake, we used records from frequency questionnaires from the pregnancy period. The cognitive development of children was recorded by parents in regularly sent questionnaires. They assessed, for example, vocabulary, whether the child understands individual words or already says them themselves. At the age of 8, the children were then invited to a series of examinations, which included IQ measurement, including the verbal component,” says Hrežová.
This work was supported by project ‘Systemic Risk Institute’ (LX22NPO5101), funded by the European Union–Next Generation EU (Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, NPO: EXCELES). The authors thank the RECETOX Research Infrastructure (No LM2023069) financed by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports for supportive background. This work was supported from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreements No 857560 (CETOCOEN Excellence) and No 857487 (R-Exposome Chair).
Learn more: https://doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdae307
The EIRENE IMP project was officially launched during a two-day hybrid kick-off meeting held on 25–26 June 2026 at the Technology Centre Prague. The opening event brought together project partners, representatives of national nodes of the EIRENE RI research infrastructure, and project managers from the beneficiary and the European Commission.
