There has been a large investment of funds in helping to promote and provide the proper care of pregnant women here in the family oriented Syracuse community. With this emphasis on good health for pregnant women there has generally been a consensus here in Syracuse that extra iron is good for pregnant women. Now a report has come out which says many pregnant women are not helped with extra iron.
ScienceDaily has written "Extra Iron Doesn't Help Many Pregnant Women, Study Suggests", http://bit.ly/gXb2f5.. Women here in Syracuse who are pregnant or who are considering becoming pregnant are certainly interested in this report. ScienceDaily has published this article with editorial adaptations from materials provided by Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp, http://bit.ly/f2Paoj. And this study has been published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, http://bit.ly/dEZ9VP.
The researchers for this study have said although universal prenatal supplementation with iron is recommended, an extra intake of iron does not noticeably benefit pregnant women, except when they are anemic. These researchers of the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp and colleagues made this observation by following more than a thousand pregnant women in Burkina Faso. Iron is needed by our body to produce hemoglobin, which is the substance in our red blood cells responsible for the transport of oxygen through our body. Out of the 1268 pregnant women in this study, 43% were found to be anemic.
Half of the women in this study received daily pills with 60 milligrams of iron (plus folic acid); the other half received 30 mg of iron (plus folic acid, zinc, vitamins A and C and other micronutrients). These women took the pills until 3 months after delivery. At the completion of the study all of the women ended up with about the same levels of iron in their blood, regardless of how much iron they had taken. All of the women had around 11 grams of hemoglobin per deciliter of blood, which is slightly below normal.
The growing child needs oxygen during pregnancy and so women need more iron than normally. However, the administration of extra iron to the 'normal' women could not prevent their hemoglobin levels from dropping slightly. The researchers concluded that "The benefit of iron supplements in nonanemic women is unclear." And so pregnant women here in Syracuse and elsewhere should discuss with their health care providers exactly how beneficial iron supplements may be for them.
Photographer: renjith krishnan
