A new study by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has found that eating yogurt enriched with vitamin D can greatly improve the health of pregnant women by increasing their vitamin D and antioxidant levels.

The research, which is the first of its kind in Ghana, involved 126 pregnant women in their first trimester who were receiving antenatal care in hospitals across the Ashanti Region.

Half of the women were given yogurt with added vitamin D, while the other half received regular yogurt. The women were monitored for six months.

At the beginning of the study, about 88% of the women had low levels of vitamin D, and 73% had low antioxidant levels both of which can affect the health of mothers and babies. Surprisingly, getting sunlight did not make a difference.

However, the study found that a person’s racial background was linked to how likely they were to have low vitamin D.

By the end of the study published in Nature, the group that took the fortified yogurt showed much better results.

Their vitamin D and antioxidant levels were significantly higher than those who took regular yogurt. On the other hand, the women who took the regular yogurt continued to show very low vitamin D (93%) and antioxidant levels (56%).

The researchers led by Vivian Ayamah say: "This shows that adding vitamin D to common foods like yogurt can help improve the health of pregnant women and their babies. They recommend that more efforts be made to use such nutrition-based solutions to address vitamin D deficiency, which remains a serious problem in Ghana."

Co-authors of the study include: Dr. Charles Apprey, Dr. Eric Owusu Mensah, Prof. Reginald Adjetey Annan & Mr. Ebenezer Senu.