Do the benefits of folic acid fortification outweigh the risks?

摘要

Worldwide we are preventing only about 10% of the neural tube defects that can be avoided by folate. The EU and some of the world's largest countries have not adopted mandatory fortification, the only population strategy definitively shown to reduce the incidence of these devastating birth defects. Some have argued that fortification will benefit only a small number of children at the expense of an unproved risk to a much larger number of elderly people. But arguments focusing on this unresolved issue overlook another compelling reason for mandatory fortification.