By pinpointing the link between arsenic exposure, folic acid, and spina bifida, research from Harvard Chan School’s Maitreyi Mazumdar is helping the government of Bangladesh take action to prevent the often disabling spinal condition.

In her years as a Boston Children’s Hospital pediatric neurologist, Maitreyi Mazumdar had cared for children with many different neurological disorders. But she had rarely seen cases of spina bifida, a birth defect in which a baby’s spine doesn’t properly develop.

That changed in 2009, when she began working in Bangladesh on a study led by David Christiani, Elkan Blout Professor of Environmental Genetics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, that was investigating the link between prenatal exposure to arsenic and the neurodevelopment of children.  During the course of this research, Mazumdar frequently saw infants with the life-altering or life-threatening condition.

“I was surprised at how little experience I had with spina bifida given how common it is,” said Mazumdar, associate professor in the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard Chan School. “It depends on what corner of the world you’re in. There’s a stark difference in spina bifida prevalence between countries.”

Mazumdar hypothesized that rates of spina bifida were high in Bangladesh because the population was exposed to high levels of arsenic and had low levels of folate (or the vitamin’s synthetic version, folic acid) in their diets.