Evidence of C15:0 Essentiality for Healthy Cognition

Healthy Aging

Higher C15:0 Linked to Improved Cognitive Development in Children

Last week, we shared exciting news about a third team who has independently validated C15:0 as the first essential fatty acid to be discovered in over 90 years. Essential to protect our long-term metabolic, heart, liver and red blood cell health – and essential for early development, too.

While the study shared last week focused on causing and fixing nutritional C15:0 deficiencies in rodent pups, this week we cover a study by Yuan et al. supporting the importance of C15:0 for cognitive development in human pups. Well, babies.

That sounds encouraging. Why was this study done?

A multidisciplinary team of researchers in France has been following the health of 1200 mother-child pairs, from the mom’s third trimester of pregnancy through their children’s 5th to 6th year of life.

Previously, Yuan et al. showed that the more high-fat dairy products mom ate (especially cheese), the higher the C15:0 in her red blood cell membranes and colostrum.  Separately, George et al. demonstrated that babies with higher C15:0 dietary intake from mom’s milk had healthier brain and body growth.

As such, Yuan et al. followed up on their cohort to see if and how those early C15:0 levels in mom influenced their child’s cognitive development at ages 2, 3, and 5-6 years old.

So, what did they find?

To cut to the chase, Yuan et al. found the following:

• The more C15:0 mom had in her red blood cells during pregnancy, the better the cognitive language scores of her child at age 3. And the better overall cognition scores of her child at 5-6 years old.
• Similarly, there was a positive correlation between the amount of C15:0 in mom’s colostrum (her earliest milk) and her child’s: 1) cognitive language scores at the ages of 3, as well as 5-6 years old, as well as 2) overall cognition at 5-6 years of age.
• The most significant cognitive benefits were among children who were breastfed for at least 6 months. This ls likely because most infant formulas contain little to no C15:0.

The authors conclude that these “pioneering results call for external validation to challenge their causality.” In other words, was higher C15:0 not just associated with improved cognitive development, but the cause?

More studies are needed, but the parallel rodent studies from Ciesielski et al. further support that C15:0 is indeed essential for early development in mammals, especially during the time that is equivalent to that critical first 1,000 days of human life.