Micronutrients Drift During Daily and Weekly Iron Supplementation in Non-anaemic and Anaemic Pregnancy.

AIMS

Pregnancy is a phenomenon associated with dynamic changes in physical, mental and biochemical status of body and demands increased nutritional intake for developing foetus. The level of various micronutrients which act as co-factors for antioxidant enzymes or it-self as antioxidants gets altered with the progression of pregnancy. The present longitudinal study summarized the trend of selected micronutrients level in anaemic (AP) and non-anaemic primigravida (NAP) supplemented with daily and weekly oral iron folic acid (IFA) tablet during pregnancy and postpartum.

METHODS

A total of 200 primigravida {N = 100; NAP (Hb > 11 g/dl) and N = 100 AP (Hb = 8-11 g/dl) assigned daily (N = 50) and weekly (N = 50) supplementation} were recruited and overnight fasting blood samples were withdrawn at 13-16 weeks, after 3 months and 6 weeks postpartum. The serum iron, copper, zinc, magnesium and manganese were estimated by inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrophotometer.

RESULTS

Serum manganese ( < 0.05) at baseline and magnesium ( < 0.01) at postpartum was significantly different between NAP and AP supplemented with daily IFA tablets. The trend of copper found to be increased during pregnancy and later declined at postpartum in both the groups. Daily supplementation resulted in significantly high iron ( < 0.05) in NAP during third trimester.

CONCLUSIONS

Hypozincemia and hypomagnesemia was observed in anaemic pregnancy supplemented with weekly and daily IFA respectively. Clear evidence of altered micronutrients levels during healthy and anaemic pregnancy was seen. The reference values may be drawn from this study for the nutritional assessment during pregnancy for healthy pregnancy outcomes.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

Clinical Trial Registry-India, http://ctri.nic.in, CTRI/2014/10/005135.