Study Findings

Thanks to the invaluable contributions of our study participants, the APrON study has made groundbreaking discoveries in areas such as study recruitment strategies, human health, and quality of life.

The most effective way to find potential participants for APrON was through face-to-face contact in clinics that see a large volume of women in early pregnancy.

Women who took a supplement containing DHA were 10.6 and 11.1 times more likely to meet the current EU consensus for pregnancy and postpartum respectively.
It is recommended that nutritional counselling about the benefits of a supplement should extend beyond pregnancy.

APrON findings do not support the claim that a pregnant woman’s body becomes less responsive to stress as her pregnancy progresses. We therefore provide new evidence suggesting that stressful experiences during any period of pregnancy have the potential to affect fetal development. Pregnant women who receive low levels of social support release more stress hormone (cortisol) after an episode of negative mood as compared to women who received more social support. This is an important finding because it suggests that social support may protect developing babies from the harmful effects of increases in stress hormone (cortisol) that are related to bad mood.

Awareness and understanding of probiotics is high among mothers in Alberta. However, there is still uncertainty regarding the benefit and safety of probiotics in infants.