Serum ferritin levels and their significance in normal full-term pregnant women.

Serum ferritin levels were determined by radioimmunoassay (RIA) method and then analysed in 240 normal full-term pregnant women. Their hemoglobin concentrations were found to be normal in the first trimester. None of them had received any hematonic during their whole pregnancy period. Their mean age was 27.7 years and the mean pregnancy duration was 39.5 weeks. Mean hemoglobin concentration in these normal pregnant women was 12.6 g%. Mean serum ferritin was 23.1 ng/ml. It was significantly lower than the mean value of the normal non-pregnant women of the same age. In this study, we found that even normal pregnant women, 15.42% (37 out of the 240) had subclinical iron deficiency and 12.92% (31 out of the 240) of the previously normal pregnant women had clinical anemia during their term of pregnancy. Multiparity was found to be a factor in the prevalence of iron deficiency but age and gravida number played no role in the occurrence of iron deficiency anemia.