PONTI study update

I heard back from one of the researchers on the PONTI study (regarding whether inositol reduces the risk of neural tube defects for women who have had a previously affected pregnancy).  If you remember from my prior post (http://3yearwait.blogspot.com/2015/10/does-inositol-especially-d-chiro.html), in the PONTI study they looked at women who had had a previous NTD affected pregnancy and were planning a further pregnancy.  Everyone in the study took folic acid (5 mg per day) and some people (randomly assigned by the researchers) took myo-inositol as well.

The researchers indicated that the study is not yet published but will be very soon.  They noted that it was a pilot project, so the numbers in the two different parts of the study were not large enough to give a definitive answer.  But they indicated that none of the women taking inositol had a recurrence of a neural tube defect (ie, all the babies born to women in the study were unaffected) and there were some anencephaly among women taking only folic acid.  At this point the numbers were not significant enough to prove that inositol has a beneficial effect, but they will likely move forward with further research.  They also indicated that they did not find any indication of harmful effects from inositol.

So, where does this leave us?  Inositol might be helpful for preventing neural tube defects and does not appear to be harmful.  Obviously I’m going to keep taking my 50mg d-chiro-inositol and 2000mg myo-inositol (http://3yearwait.blogspot.com/2015/10/inositol-part-ii.html).