PRIYA trial links teen B12 intake to long-term health in babies Premium

The PRIYA trial links adolescent B12 intake to improved long-term health outcomes in babies, emphasising the need for supplementation.

It is known that the Indian population, particularly vegetarians, is  deficient in vitamin B12. The vitamin essential for the formation of blood cells and the functioning of nerve cells is mainly found in animal-derived food. B12 deficiency during pregnancy has been associated with neural tube defects and poor foetal growth, affecting long-term health.

In 1993, Chittaranjan Yajnik, Director, Diabetes Unit, King Edward Memorial Hospital, Pune, undertook the Pune Maternal Nutrition Study (PMNS) to investigate the parental determinants of foetal growth. The study showed that low vitamin B12 and high folate among women predicted a higher risk of what Dr. Yajnik called “diabesity”, or insulin resistance and obesity in offsprings’ later life.

Researchers asked if increasing the B12 status early on, in adolescence, could reduce the risk of diabesity in offspring. The Pune Rural Intervention in Young Adolescents (PRIYA) trial tested this hypothesis in 2012-2020, within PMNS. The follow-up studies on the babies of the women who were adolescents around 2012 ended in 2025.

This trial led to the first in vivo human study in which researchers investigated the molecular aspects of vitamin B12 deficiency through an intergenerational approach.

Investigators gave adolescents in the rural areas of Pune vitamin B12 and multi-micronutrient supplements (over and above standard care) and followed up to the delivery of their first child. Following delivery, they isolated the cord blood mononuclear cells (CMCs) and investigated them to study gene expression. The researchers reported that supplementation with vitamin B12 and multi-micronutrients in adolescents improved the ponderal index, i.e. weight in proportion to height, later in their neonates and altered gene expression in the CMCs.

To test how vitamin B12 was affecting gene expression, the researchers performed a cross-sectional study, whose findings were published in the Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease on January 12. They conducted a weighted gene co-expression network analysis in cord blood cells and observed that higher levels of B12 in the cord blood correlated positively with the expression of genes encoding methylases — enzymes that add a methyl group to DNA, an epigenetic modification that regulates gene expression.