Khartoum Teaching Hospital, Khartoum, Sudan
Diagn Pathol. 2012 Dec 3;7:168. doi: 10.1186/1746-1596-7-168.
Iron deficiency anemia (IDA) is a major health problem during pregnancy and it has adverse effects on the mother and the newborn. Red cell distribution width (RDW), which is a quantitative measure for red cell size variation (anisocytosis), is a predictor of IDA. Little is known regarding RDW and IDA during pregnancy.
A cross sectional study was conducted at the antenatal clinic of Khartoum Hospital, Sudan, to determine the performance of RDW in the diagnosis of IDA using serum ferritin as a gold standard.
Among 194 pregnant women with a gestational period of 21.4 ± 6.5 weeks, 57 (29.4%) had IDA according to serum ferritin levels (<15 μg/l) and 61 (31.4%) had IDA according to RDW (>14.5). The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value of RDW where serum ferritin was the gold standard were 43.8% (95% CI: 31.4-57.0%), 73.7% (95% CI: 65.8-80.5%), 41.0% (95% CI: 29.2-53.6%), and 76.0% (95% CI: 68.1-82.6%), respectively.
In this study, we found that RDW has a poor performance in diagnosing IDA among pregnant women compared with serum ferritin as the gold standard.
缺铁性贫血（IDA）是妊娠期的一个主要健康问题，会对母亲和新生儿产生不良影响。红细胞分布宽度（RDW）是红细胞大小变异（不均一性）的定量指标，是 IDA 的预测指标。关于妊娠期 RDW 和 IDA 的信息知之甚少。
本研究在苏丹喀土穆医院的产前诊所进行了一项横断面研究，以确定 RDW 在使用血清铁蛋白作为金标准诊断 IDA 中的表现。
在 194 名妊娠 21.4 ± 6.5 周的孕妇中，根据血清铁蛋白水平（<15μg/l），有 57 例（29.4%）患有 IDA，根据 RDW（>14.5），有 61 例（31.4%）患有 IDA。以血清铁蛋白为金标准时，RDW 的灵敏度、特异度、阳性预测值和阴性预测值分别为 43.8%（95%CI：31.4-57.0%）、73.7%（95%CI：65.8-80.5%）、41.0%（95%CI：29.2-53.6%）和 76.0%（95%CI：68.1-82.6%）。
在这项研究中，我们发现与血清铁蛋白作为金标准相比，RDW 在诊断孕妇 IDA 方面表现不佳。
