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Prenatal Folic Acid and Schizophrenia Prevention

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  • In this video, Joshua Roffman, MD, MMSc, is the director of research in the Schizophrenia Clinical and Research Program and the co-director of Mass General Neuroscience
  • Dr. Roffman discusses his recent work investigating folic acid’s neuroprotective effects that may guard against schizophrenia development
  • He hopes that understanding the biology behind brain changes characteristic of schizophrenia can be harnessed to develop more specific interventions

Joshua Roffman, MD, MMSc, is the director of research in the Schizophrenia Clinical and Research Program and the co-director of Mass General Neuroscience. His recent research leveraged the folic acid fortification of the American grain supply in the mid-1990s as a natural experiment to study its effect on brain development. They found that folic acid exposure in utero was associated with brain changes that appear to be protective against risk for schizophrenia.

Learn more about Schizophrenia Clinical and Research Program

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